


The Vegas Six and the Lucky Seven

by kosmickway (KMDWriterGrl)



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, IT - Stephen King
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-04
Updated: 2014-02-05
Packaged: 2018-01-11 02:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 44,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KMDWriterGrl/pseuds/kosmickway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the CSI team receives a request for help processing a mass grave, they travel to Derry, Maine and cross paths with a group of six childhood friends who clue them in to an otherworldly serial killer stalking the children of Derry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Killer in Maine

**Author's Note:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTES: In order to mesh the world of CSI and that of the Lucky Seven, I had to do quite a bit of selective time traveling. King's original work is set in the 1980s when the Lucky Seven are in their 40s. I wanted to keep them the same age but bring them into the 21st century. So for the purposes of this work, the Lucky Seven are the same ages they were in the book but brought forward into the mid-2000s. On the CSI front, the reader should assume that this story takes place after the season 8 episode "Dead Doll" but prior to season 9's "For Warrick."
> 
> As far as King's work goes, I meshed some of the components of the novel and the TV mini-series ... and other elements I changed entirely. For the purposes of the story, what becomes the final face-off with It in the book is a failed first confrontation in my story. Everything else is explained inside the story itself. 
> 
> DISCLAIMER: This is meant to be a love song to Stephen King's master-work "It" and to the beauty of "CSI" before the original team broke up and Billy Petersen left. I do not own these characters and make no claim to them at all. The only thing mine here is a wildly insane story :)

Chapter 1: A Killer in Maine

“Catherine, how do you feel about Maine?”

“Maine?” Catherine stared at her boss as if he’d lost his mind. “I hear the same thing about their lobster that everyone does, I guess, but I’ve never been there. Why do you ask?”

“Ecklie just dropped this off with me,” Grissom said, holding up a single sheet of paper with the logo of the Maine State Bureau of Investigation emblazoned on it. “It’s a request for a CSI team … ours.” 

“They don’t have their own CSIs in Maine?”

“Nothing of our caliber. They’re requesting help on a case. It’s … Catherine, it’s bad.”

Catherine furrowed her brow. For the normally unflappable Grissom to show even this much emotion spoke volumes. She sat down in the chair across from his desk and held out her hand for the file folder. “Let me see.”

Grissom passed her a file folder so enormous and thick with papers that she had trouble holding it with just one hand. “What the hell is this?” she asked, plunking it down in front of her. “Either they’re extremely overzealous about documenting or …”

She didn’t finish. She didn’t need to. The phrase died on her lips when she saw the top photograph on the stack.  
It was a shot of a cave, not just a little hole in the side of a mountain going back a few feet but a REAL cave, one that went up and back for what must have felt like endless miles. Even from the limited scope of the photo, Catherine could tell it was an enormous space. 

She had more trouble making sense of what was in the cave. The walls all the way up to the ceiling were filled with what looked like neatly wound cocoons, the kind a caterpillar would hide inside during its chrysalis … or, perhaps more accurately, what a spider spun its leftovers in after it was finished eating. She has no idea how the cocoons were suspended, but suspended they were, from the ceiling, the walls, niches in the rock. It was such a strange and surreal picture that she found she was having trouble grasping that it was a real photo.

On the floor of the cave was a line of bodies. They were all wrapped in the cocoon-like webbing, except for the faces (where there were faces, Catherine noted grimly-- at least two of the bodies on the floor had no skulls), which had been unwrapped for photographic documentation. 

“Jesus Christ, Gil. Are those all bodies?”

“As far as they know. And they aren’t just recent bodies, Cath. They go back decades.”

“How—“Catherine flipped through the stack of photos. “They look preserved. Are they embalmed? God, Gil, what the hell is this, some kind of storage cupboard for a local serial killer?”

“Based on the number of bodies, I’d guess more than one. There are hundreds there, Catherine. And like I said, they go back decades. Look at this.” He handed her a photograph, a close-up of one of the unwrapped bodies. It was a teenager, but clearly a teenager from a much earlier era … from the 50s or 60s. His hair had been gelled back into the style known as a duck’s ass and he was wearing a letterman’s jacket. Part of his face was missing, torn off in jagged chunks, as was one of his arms. She shuddered. 

“Not just teens either,” he continued quietly. “Kids. Mainly kids. The youngest so far is two. But that’s only based on what they’ve excavated from the cave so far. There’s hundreds more bodies.”

Catherine met her boss’s eyes and understood quite well why he looked so disturbed. “So what do they want from us?”

“Mainly they need help recovering and identifying the victims. They want each victim thoroughly investigated for common trace fibers, hair, and skin. They want us looking for DNA on the fresher bodies, though obviously that possibility becomes more and more remote the longer the body’s been in the cave. They want as thorough a forensic search on the cave as it’s possible to get. They want him … them … whomever… caught.” 

Catherine nodded. “Who’s going?”

“The whole team. Even Jim. He has some contacts among the guys on the force at the town we’re going to.”

“What town is that?”

Gil stood and began gathering the photos together. “Derry, Maine.”

***

Leaving the airport in Maine, they all stopped and took a deep breath of air that was moist and cool. Sara and Grissom had both grown up on the California coast, so they were used to the smell of the ocean, but to native Nevadans like Catherine and Greg and native Texan Nick, the wash of air tinted with a hint of salt was a new and welcome experience. 

“Oh, I could get used to this,” Nick said with a satisfied smile, breathing in deeply. “Lower 80s in August instead of 110 sizzling degrees … hell yeah!”

“God, it’s so green,” Greg marveled, looking around. “Look at all these trees!”

Sara grinned. “You act like you’ve never seen foliage before, Greg.”

“Nothing like this. I bet it’s amazing up here in the fall.”

“If you guys keep standing around and talking about the weather we’ll be here till then,” Jim said, waving them toward the parking lot where their rental SUVs were waiting. 

They piled into the cars, Gil, Sara, and Nick in one, Catherine, Jim, and Greg in the other. After an hour’s drive, they were pulling into the wide circular driveway of the Derry Inn. 

“Doesn’t seem like a place where serial killers come to stash their bodies,” Greg said, climbing out of the car and stretching his legs. 

“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” Grissom said absently, fiddling with his iPhone to access the confirmation numbers for their rooms. “Go ahead and bring in the kits, guys. I don’t want them in the rentals.”

They decided on room assignments … Catherine and Sara together, Nick and Greg, Grissom and Jim… then arranged to meet downstairs in the lobby in an hour to find something to eat. Grissom, predictably, decided to go exploring rather than take advantage of the time to nap or read and set himself the task of finding a place where they could spread out and work. 

The “Welcome to the Derry Inn” booklet that sat in his room on top of the television boasted of a “drawing room,” and that struck Grissom as the most likely place to set up shop. He wandered down the hall, studying the old framed photos of the town and the ubiquitous paintings of lobstermen and their boats until he came to a large wood-paneled room. 

It was the absolute epitome of an early 20th century drawing room in some millionaire’s hunting lodge. There were several overstuffed couches, chairs, and settees, huge heavy wooden tables with ornately carved arms and legs, an enormous wall of books, a cavernous fireplace and even a few taxidermy animal heads on the walls.

It was also occupied by a group of six people, who were huddled around one of the large wooden tables, studying a set of diagrams and a pile of newspapers. They looked as though they were doing exactly what Grissom’s group would be doing in a matter of hours—examining evidence—though of what Grissom had no idea. 

“Excuse me?” Grissom rapped lightly on the door and was a little alarmed when the small group turned almost as one, an expression of shock and, strangely, fear on their collective faces. 

“Can I help you?” This came from a slight black man with graying temples. He was dressed in jeans, a neatly pressed shirt, and a jacket with actual patches on his elbows. 

“Sorry to bother you. I was just wondering how much longer you were going to be. My group and I were hoping to use this space to spread our work out.”

“Oh.” The man looked a little perplexed. “I wasn’t expecting—“He glanced back at the diagrams and newspapers on the table and then back at Grissom. “I didn’t know there was another group here.”

“We just got in a few minutes ago. We’re doing some work on the crime scene that was found downtown.”

There was a gasp and Grissom looked for the source. A tall, lovely woman with gorgeous copper hair was staring at him with big, frightened blue eyes. The expression was only there for a second, then it was gone and she looked embarrassed. 

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, “the police chief told me the citizens were aware of what had been found.”

“Y-y-you mean the cave,” another man said. He was slender, with a ponytail and a familiar face. “I-i-i-in the B-B-Barrens. The one with all the buh-buh-buh bod-bod-“ He struggled with the word until a bearded man set a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. 

“Bodies,” he provided. “I hadn’t—we hadn’t realized they’d called in anyone to investigate it.”

“Well, there’s a first time for everything,” a red-haired, mustachioed man quipped. “Why couldn’t they have done that before we got here and saved us all a lot of time and trouble?” He smiled at Grissom, a disarming, winning, warm smile. “Well, now that the cavalry’s come, maybe I can go the hell home. I’m starting to miss L.A. … the murder rate’s not as high.”

“Beep beep, Richie,” the bearded man said. He turned toward Grissom. “Sorry, who did you say you were again?”

“I’m Gil Grissom with the Las Vegas crime lab. I’m a forensic specialist. My team and I were called in by the State Bureau of Investigation to help ID the bodies found in the cave down by … where did you say it was?”

“The Barrens,” supplied a pale blonde man. He wore glasses and a sweater vest and looked like the kind of kid Gil would have made friends with in school. “It’s the overgrown area of forest down by the bridge. The Kenduskeag and the Canal meet there. We used to play there when we were kids.” 

“So you know the area pretty well then?” Grissom asked. 

The red-haired man snorted. “Oh, you could say that all right.”

“We all grew up here,” the woman supplied quietly. “We went to school here, played in the Barrens.”

“Do you mind if I call on you if we need a local guide?” he asked, speaking to all of them. 

“Th-th-that would probably be a really b-buh-bad idea,” the pony-tailed man said abruptly, straightening from where he’d been leaning against the table. “Yuh-you being here at all is a really b-buh-bad idea.”

“Bill--” the woman said, laying a hand on his arm. 

“You should leave Derry as fast as you can,” the man—Bill—said, his voice shaking with intensity. “B-b-before it gets d-duh-dark. You don’t want to go down in those B-buh-Barrens, believe me. You don’t want to see what’s in that cave. You s-sh-sh-should get out of here before I-I-I-It finds you, too.”

Grissom heard the “I” in “it” become a capital under his enunciation and he wondered briefly what that was about but brushed it off in favor of the more obvious question of why the man was acting so irrationally. 

“Bill, come on, let’s get you upstairs, you need to rest,” the woman said soothingly, stroking his arm. She shot a look at the bearded man, one that pled for help, and he responded by immediately taking Bill’s elbow. 

“Come on, buddy, it’s been a long day for all of us. Bev’s right, you just need some sleep.”

“Tell them, Muh-Muh-Mike,” the ponytailed man said, swinging his head toward the black man who had been watching with a bemused expression. “Tell them to guh-guh-get out of D-D-Derry, to stay away from the Buh-Buh-Barrens. Tell them!”

“Go up and get some sleep, Big Bill,” Mike replied. “We’ll check on you later.” He nodded at Bev and the bearded man, who began to lead the still frantic Bill out the door. 

“Don’t go down in the s-s-s-sewers. Stay away from I-I-I-It!”

Grissom met the eyes of the remaining three men and saw fear and alarm on their faces. 

Mike shook his head and stepped forward. “I hope you’ll forgive Bill, Mr. Grissom. He’s been under a lot of stress. His wife was injured in an accident a week ago and he hasn’t been sleeping. When he has, it’s been with very vivid nightmares.”

Grissom nodded slowly, his gaze following the retreating trio, as the other two men chimed in their agreement. “No harm done.” He shook himself out of his reverie. “It looks like I dredged up some unpleasant memories.”

“No, you didn’t do the dredging,” the red-haired man said sardonically. “They were all ready on the surface.” He looked over at Mike. “I think we can pack it in for awhile, can’t we, Mikey? Let the crime fighters use the room to fight crime.”

“Sure.” Mike turned and began to carefully fold the newspaper and diagrams into a cardboard box. “What Bill said, Mr. Grissom, about going down to the Barrens … well, just don’t go alone. How many are on your team?”

“Six,” Grissom responded automatically. “Why?”

“Six,” Mike said with a nod. “That’s a pretty good number. Don’t go down there with any less than that.”

Grissom stared at the man, flummoxed. “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t either,” he replied. “But something seems to.” He placed the top on the cardboard carton and shouldered it. “Don’t go alone. Promise me.”

When Grissom didn’t say anything, Mike turned back around and stared at him intently. “Mr. Grissom. Don’t go alone. PROMISE ME.”  
Something in the older man’s gaze was truly alarming to Grissom. Rather than attempt to figure out what it was, he simply nodded. “I won’t go alone. I promise.” 

“None of you,” the blonde man chimed in. “None of you should go down there alone. There are … let’s just say there are things in Derry that are worse than anything you’d meet on the streets in Vegas.” He took a puff on an inhaler that he pulled out of his sweater vest pocket. “Nice to meet you,” he said, almost as an afterthought. “Come on, Richie.”

Richie shrugged at Grissom as he trailed after the blonde man. “What happens in Derry stays in Derry,” he said, but the way that he said it made Grissom think that it was more than just a bad play on the old Vegas joke. 

Mike followed the other two out of the room. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Grissom. I’d say welcome to Derry, but I don’t think you want what it’s going to welcome you with.” 

And with those enigmatic—and disturbing words—he was gone.


	2. What's Stalking Derry?

Grissom was still mulling over that encounter when Nick and Greg came clattering down the stairs, Catherine and Sara close behind them. 

“Let’s get some food!” Nick trumpeted, stepping out onto the front porch of the Inn. “Man, this fresh air is making me work up an appetite!”

“When are you NOT hungry, Nicky?” Sara teased, affectionately tapping his shoulder. 

“Seldom to never. But this air … it’s so nice and cool, you know? It makes me feel good inside. And HONGRY!”

“I know what you mean,” Greg agreed, taking a deep breath. He grinned and jammed his sunglasses onto his nose, even though it was overcast enough not to need them. “There are worse places to go for a murder investigation.”

Jim and Catherine joined them, Catherine stretching lazily and rolling her neck. “I guess traveling must have hit me harder than I thought,” she was saying to Jim. “I never take naps but I was out before my head hit the pillow!”

“Coast to coast travel isn’t for the easily jet-lagged,” Jim agreed, sidling up to the porch railing. “Where are we headed, Gil?”

“The woman at the desk said there’re a few restaurants within walking distance. We’re about a mile away from Bassey Park and City Center—best place to go to get a good look at downtown Derry.”

“Let’s walk that way then,” Nick said contentedly. “I’m up for a little stroll.” 

They group started walking, splintering off into twos and threes to talk as they headed down the sidewalk. Catherine and Jim were off in a little world of their own, chatting, at ease in a way they would only have been off-duty in Vegas. Apropos of nothing, Greg and Nick were carrying on a boisterous conversation about hockey. Sara dropped back to walk next to Grissom. 

“You’re awfully quiet,” she commented and then, smiling, corrected herself. “Quieter than usual. Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” he replied abstractedly. “Just thinking.”

“You’re always just thinking. Ever try not thinking once in a while?”

Grissom gave her one of his enigmatic half-smiles. “Then I’d be bored.”

“Boredom is a sign of an inactive mind,” she agreed. “Anything in particular on your mind?”

“I met someone downstairs,” he said slowly, trying to get his thoughts in order. “A group of people. And they were acting very  
strange.”

Before he could finish explaining, the group drew to a halt at a four-way crosswalk, the green expanse of the park stretching in front of them and a block of restaurants, offices, shops, and empty storefronts to their left. 

“Diner,” Greg said, pointing toward a quaint looking edifice labeled simply “Bob’s.” Grissom trailed the group across the street, still turning the conversation from the hotel over and over in his head. 

Sara laid a hand softly on his arm. “What is it, Gil?”

“Something …” he sighed in frustration. “I don’t know yet.”

Sara nodded and squeezed his forearm, then dropped her hand. “Let me know when you do.”

It was a strange feeling and Grissom couldn’t escape it, not while ordering or waiting for their food, not while walking to the park and settling into one of the picnic shelters to spread out their dinners. A small nagging something—he couldn’t put a name to what that something was, which was driving him even more solidly toward distraction—was making him feel on edge. Something that the ponytailed man, Bill, had said. Something about Bill himself … his face, maybe … 

He shook his head and booted his laptop, pulling up the pictures he’d been sent by the SBI agents in Bangor, Maine. 

“A week ago the State Bureau of Investigation was alerted to the presence of a cave in downtown Derry containing the bodies of hundreds of murder victims. When agents went in to take a closer look, they discovered that the bodies had all been wrapped in a cocoon-like fiber, tough and flexible, and hung from the walls and ceiling of the cave.” 

He showed them a picture, the same one Catherine had looked at the day before in his office. Greg leaned forward to get a better look, squinting. “Looks like spider webbing almost.” He gave his superior a flip smile. “But I guess that’s more your department than mine.”

“The victims they’ve recovered so far—and there are still literally hundreds they haven’t even been able to recover and unwrap-- range in age from 2 years old to mid-40s and are of both genders. They’re primarily white, but there are so many races represented, from black to Native American that the profilers are all completely flummoxed.”

“Killers don’t generally hunt outside their own racial lines,” Nick stated, chewing on a mouthful of sandwich. “So what are the odds that we’ve stumbled across the dumping grounds for a group of multi-racial serial killers?”

“It would be the first time I’ve ever heard of it,” Brass put in. “Serial killers are like sharks … they have their familiar hunting grounds, they stalk their victims solitarily, and they’re typically at the top of the food chain.”

“And what are the odds that a town this size would be hosting a whole slew of serial killers?” Greg added practically. “Unless they’re forming a support group …”

“The thing is,” Grissom said slowly, scrolling through the pages of the Maine SBI’s crime index, which was broken down by county, city, and type of crime, “there seems to be a huge amount of crime here in Derry. And we’re not just talking property crimes. Murder and suicide rates are through the roof. Kids go missing here by the dozens, sometimes as many as 25 to 50 a year. There’s an enormous spike in violent crime every 30 years or so but even on a normal year, this is not a safe place to live.”

Sara frowned. “So what you’re saying is that it IS possible that maybe we’ve stumbled onto multiple serial killers. That this is a training ground for them and we’ve found their storage locker, so to speak.”

Grissom shrugged. “Honestly, Sara, I don’t know what to think. We’re here primarily to help with the forensics and identification on the bodies, not to profile a killer. When I say that there are hundreds more to identify, I’m not exaggerating. There are forensic anthropologists in from Washington DC trying to determine IDs from skulls, pelvises, teeth, anything that’s left. And in some cases there isn’t much. These bodies look like—“ He stopped, inordinately unnerved by the prospect he was about to unleash on his group.

“Like they’ve been eaten,” Greg supplied, taking a swig of his iced tea. “I know where you’re going with this, Gris.” He pulled the laptop toward him and began flipping through the pictures. “And that in itself is weird. It’s a popular concept on TV but really, how many cases have we documented in which someone was truly cannibalizing another human being?”

“There was that jogger,” Nick put in. “The one with porphyria.”

“Yeah, okay, her. And Dahmer and Kemper and Gein but other than those guys who are well known because they’ve been publicized to death, how often do we run across this? What are the odds of a group of cannibalistic serial killers in backwoods Maine?”

“Multi-generational cannibalistic serial killers,” Brass added, pointing at one of the photos of a seven-year-old who was missing a huge chunk out of his thigh and both his arms up to his shoulder joints. “The clothes on this one suggest he went missing in the 60s or 70s. But then you’ve got this one here—“ He pointed to a ten-year-old girl wearing a Jem and the Holograms t-shirt whose hair was a mass of frizzy bangs. “I remember Ellie wearing this exact same shirt to elementary school in the 80s. What are the chances good ole Pop’s been pulling a Hannibal the Cannibal since the 60s and teaching Junior the art of fine dining so that he can continue the trend?” He shook his head. “That scares me on a level that I didn’t think was possible anymore.” 

“So what are we saying?” Catherine asked, balling up the aluminum foil from her sandwich and taking a sip of her diet Coke. “I mean, you guys are making it sound like you think there’s something more going on here than a rash of serial killings.”

“I think there is,” Grissom said slowly. He told them about the group of people he’d met downstairs and the strange way they acted. “They seem to think there’s something wrong here, too.”

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong,” Nick said, finishing off his chips. “We found their hiding spot, that’s what’s wrong!”

“Wait a minute,” Sara scoffed, holding up a fending hand. “You think the people Gris met back at the Inn are a group of serial killers?”

“Why else would they be so nervous?” Nick asked practically. He turned to Grissom. “You said the one guy with the ponytail got really upset when you mentioned going down to look at the cave. You said he told us to get out of Derry as fast as we could, that we shouldn’t go down to the Barrens. What other reason could he have for saying that if he wasn’t trying to protect his favorite hiding spot?”

Grissom shook his head. “No. Sorry, Nicky, I think you’re off base on this one. They all seemed scared, really scared.”

“Scared we’d find out where they’d been hiding the bodies!”

“Five men and a woman stalking and killing kids together, eating them, and then dumping them in a cave?” Catherine asked skeptically. “That flies in the face of everything we’ve ever seen, heard, read, or understood about serial killers.”

“But that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible,” Nick insisted. 

“I’m not saying it’s not possible, Nicky,” Catherine replied. “You do this job long enough you realize anything is possible. But it isn’t probable.” She looked over at Grissom for help. “You’re with me on this, right?”

“I’m with you,” Grissom repeated. “But other than that point, I don’t really know where I’m at. It’s like we’ve all been saying … what ARE the odds of multi-racial, multi-generational, cannibalistic serial killers in a small town in Maine? It would take too long to do the math but the odds are infinitesimal. So I guess the next question becomes this: if it isn’t a group of people committing these murders, who or what is?


	3. The Lucky Seven

“I-I-It,” Bill stuttered, his face an alarming mix of white and red. “I-i-i-it’s going to s-s-strike out at those p-p-people however It-c-c-can. W-w-we have to w-w-warn them not to go down in the s-s-sewers.”

“You weren’t very successful the first time you tried that, Big Bill,” Richie replied from where he was reclining on the bed. “Now he just thinks you’re crazy.” He adopted his Buford Kissdrivel voice. “He thinks yah crazy, ah say, crazy, boy. Looney tunes. Cracker jacks. Shit for brains. Yah done one too many rounds, ah say, one too many rounds with the clown and now yah punch drunk.” He dropped the voice before any of the others could “beep-beep” him. “So maybe one of us ought to give it a shot. Whaddaya say?”

“What exactly do you want us to say to him, Richie?” Beverly asked from her place on the floor where she was leaning against Ben. “That there’s a monster that lives under Derry, one that’s been here for millions of years and is treating Derry like It’s own personal hunting grounds? That it takes the shape of a clown to lure children to It and then tears them apart and eats them? That they should watch out for voices that come out of the drains and that they shouldn’t trust anyone, not even the police? How the hell are we supposed to warn them about something that they probably won’t even be able to see?”

Her voice rose more and more with every word until finally she had to stop entirely, a hand over her mouth. Ben laid a hand on her shoulder and rubbed soothingly. 

“We have to say something, though,” he said. “Bill’s right. We can’t let them go down into that cave, right into Its lair without giving them some kind of warning.”

“I don’t know how we’re going to convince them,” Mike said, shaking his head slowly. “If I hadn’t lived it once, and then stayed here and watched it unfold again, I wouldn’t believe it either. And these are people of science, people who spend their lives unraveling the little mysteries wrapped in DNA and proteins. Convincing them that the embodiment of everything they fear is preying on kids …”

“They’ll never believe it,” Eddie said gloomily, rubbing a hand along the length of his ribs, bruised and abraded where the spider had seized and then dropped him the previous week. “They’ll assume we’re the people who’ve been killing all those kids. Hell, they probably suspect something all ready. I would if I were them.”

“However …”Mike said slowly. 

“H-h-however what, M-m-mike?” Bill asked. 

“There is one thing about them that seems significant to me, something that just might mean our luck is turning.”

“What’s that, Mike?” Beverly asked softly. 

“There are six of them,” he said. “Grissom said so. The same number we have. And there's something about this ... something that feels impossibly right. I think they're here to help us somehow. I think they're on our side.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Richie said, sitting up and staring at Mike. “You want THEM to go down and fight It with us? Good luck convincing them of that, bucko. Bev had a point … they might not even be able to see the damn thing.”

“Maybe not,” Mike conceded. “But the Turtle sent help last time. Maybe this is the help we need this time… a little dose of science, a little dose of reality. Combine the six of them with the six of us and we might be able to stop It, once and for all.”

*** 

Nightmares the likes of which she hadn’t experienced in years tore Catherine out of sleep at 4am. She lay in bed, her heart pounding, sweat pooling on her collarbones and her upper chest, irrationally too frightened to sit up. She listened for Sara’s deep, even breathing and was reassured when she heard it. She turned her head slightly and saw the younger woman curled up on her side on the opposite bed, her arms cinched tightly around a pillow. As she listened, Sara made a soft sound of protest and murmured, “Stop it, Natalie” before subsiding. 

Nightmares all around then. Catherine sat up, her heart slowing, and groped for her phone. She switched on the flashlight app and a reassuring glow lit the screen. She swung it in the direction of her suitcase and carry-on then hopped out of bed to dig for a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of long black dance pants, inexplicably chilled. 

She wasn’t going to get any more sleep, at least not right away, so she grabbed the novel she’d picked up at the airport before hopping their flight to Maine and headed downstairs to the drawing room Grissom had shown them earlier. 

Evidently she wasn’t the only person having trouble sleeping. There was another person in the room, sitting by the crackling fireplace. As Catherine stepped closer, she could make out that it was a woman with beautiful copper colored hair. Like Catherine, she was wearing a pair of yoga pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt, a beautifully patterned shawl wrapped around her shoulders to ward off the chill. A novel was propped open and upside down on the cushions beside her. 

Catherine padded quietly into the room, chose an easy chair, and sank into it, drawing her feet up into the chair. Not wanting to disturb her companion, she simply opened her book and began reading. 

She was only a few pages in when the other woman spoke. 

“It’s a good book, isn’t it?”

“I don’t normally read horror novels but something made me pick it up at the airport.”

“The author’s local,” the other woman said quietly. “Well, he used to be. He grew up here in Derry.”

Catherine flipped to the back author’s bio page and skimmed. “It doesn’t mention it.”

The woman laughed sourly. “No, it wouldn’t. None of us are exactly thrilled to be from Derry. But he’s the local rock star these days. Hometown boy makes good.”

“Do you know him? Bill Denbrough?”

“We grew up together,” she replied, smiling faintly. “Childhood sweethearts, you could say. One of the best friends I ever had.”

“It says he lives in England now. Do you ever see him?”

The woman laughed again, a little less sourly this time. “I hadn’t seen him in almost thirty years. Then the past two weeks happened. He’s actually right upstairs along with the rest of our gang of misfits. We’re having sort of a family reunion.”

It dawned on Catherine then that this was one of the people Grissom had met earlier. She decided to play it close to the vest, though, and not let on. “That’s great.” She extended a hand. “I’m Catherine Willows.”

“Beverly Marsh.” The woman’s hands were cool and strong.

The name clicked and Catherine stared. “Beverly Marsh the designer?”

Beverly nodded once. “That’s me.”

“Get out! My daughter and I love your clothes! Lindsey has a ton of your tops and camis and even a blazer that she wore to college interviews!”

Beverly smiled with real and unconcealed pleasure. “That’s so nice to hear. Thank you.”

Catherine grinned. “I’m pretty sure I’ve got at least one or two Beverly By Hand items in my suitcase upstairs. My daughter’s going to die when I tell her I met you!”

Beverly laughed and she looked years younger. “Most people don’t notice labels or designers unless they’re big names. It’s still a little weird when people recognize me.”

“And you’re from Derry, too? Wow, what are the odds of two friends from the same small town making it big?”

Beverly nodded. “I hadn’t really given that a lot of thought until recently. But it isn’t just Bill and me. Several other members of our group are also, shall we say, strangely successful.

“Oh yeah? Like who?”

“I don’t know how often you listen to the radio but a friend of ours does a show out of L.A. on Sirius satellite radio. His name’s Richie Tozier but he goes by Trashmouth. He’s a shock jock, a tamer version of Howard Stern--funny, foul-mouthed, politically incorrect, totally irreverent.”

“I don’t know him but I bet my friend Greg does. He loves those kinds of shows.”

“The only other really famous name you’d probably know is Ben Hanscom. He’s an architect, designed the BBC communications tower and a few other buildings over in Europe. His design for a memorial at Ground Zero was one of the final five chosen by the NYC mayor’s office.” 

There was a note of loving pride in the woman’s voice that led Catherine to believe there was probably more between her and Ben Hanscom than just childhood friendship. 

“You said there are six of you. What about the other two?”

“Eddie and Mike. Eddie runs a limo service in Manhattan. Mike’s the librarian here in Derry.” Beverly paused and then gave her a shrewd look. “You’re with the group of criminalists from Las Vegas, aren’t you?”

Catherine stared at her in amazement. “What gave me away?”

“I figured you had to have been. I never said there were six of us … but you knew it anyway. Either you’re with the man we met earlier today or …” She trailed off and something in her face closed. 

“Or …” Catherine prompted. 

“Or I’m about to be very sorry I ever came down here alone,” Beverly finished, almost to herself. She reached into the cushions and cupped her hand around something. Catherine automatically tensed, wondering if the woman had a gun, wishing hers wasn’t upstairs in her suitcase. 

“I AM with the group from Vegas,” Catherine said quickly. “My boss told us he’d met your group. I just didn’t want to mention it because I don’t want to talk about dead bodies at 4am, not when I’ve been having nightmares.” She noted that Beverly’s hand relaxed and came out from between the cushions and she breathed a small sigh of relief. 

“You might as well get used to that,” Beverly said. “Derry’s got a way of keeping people from sleeping.” She noted Catherine’s clenched fist and that her eyes were still fixated on the cushions. “It’s not a gun,” she assured her. “It’s a weapon but not the type you carry.” She ignored the questioning look from the other woman. “You’re going down to the cave later today, aren’t you?”

Catherine nodded cautiously. “That’s right.”

“What will you do once you’re there?”

“We’re here to look for trace evidence on the bodies. We’re looking for hair, fiber, skin cells, fingerprints, anything that can give us a clue as to who’s been killing these people. We’ll collect trace from each victim as they’re unwrapped and send it to the lab in Bangor to analyze. They’ll send reports to the State Bureau of Investigation detailing their findings. Hopefully we’ll find common elements on the victims that can be traced back to the killer or killers.”

“You won’t find much, I don’t think,” Beverly said slowly. “Some of those bodies have been down there for a long time.”

“How do you know that?” 

Beverly gave her a knowing look. “I grew up here, remember? I know how long kids have been going missing. Decades. If there are hundreds of murder victims in that cave then they’ve been down there since before I was a kid. The murders have been going on that long—longer. Further back than you can imagine.”

“Sounds like you know a lot about this.”

“We… Ben, Bill, Eddie, Mike, Stannie, Richie and me … spent the summer we turned 12 trying to find the murderer,” Beverly said matter-of-factly. “It was Bill’s idea, really. His brother, Georgie, had been killed the previous fall. He was pulled into a sewer grating, his arm twisted right off his body.” She shuddered and pulled her shawl closer around her. “It devastated Bill, nearly drove him mad with grief. After more kids started disappearing, we all sort of found each other, banded together for protection. And that’s when he told us who he thought had killed his brother.” She trailed off then, her eyes haunted. 

Catherine leaned forward, entranced by the narrative. “Who did he think had done it?”

Beverly met her eyes and Catherine was startled by the extraordinary fear in them. “It isn’t a ‘who.’ It’s a ‘what.’ And if you want me to tell you the rest of this you have to promise me that you’ll keep an open mind.”

“Of course I will,” Catherine replied earnestly. “I’m a scientist. I don’t jump to conclusions before I have evidence.”

“This is different,” Beverly said softly. “There’s nothing that I can show you that will convince you of the truth of this. There’s no evidence you can find that will make you think I’m anything other than a lunatic. But I swear to you, Catherine, this is real. It’s so real it drove us all from Derry thirty years ago. It’s the only thing that explains what you’re going to find in that cave tomorrow.” She leaned toward the other woman. “Keep an open mind. That’s all I ask.”

Catherine nodded, her eyes on the other woman’s. “I will. I swear.”

“That cave down by the Barrens isn’t just a cave; it’s a lair for the thing that killed Bill’s brother, for the thing that killed all those kids, that tried to murder me and my friends. That cave is a lair and it belongs to a monster that we call It.”

***

For more than an hour Beverly talked. She talked until she was hoarse, until her hands were clenched into rigid fists on the sofa cushions. She talked until the fire died to embers in the fireplace. And when she was done, she held her breath, waiting for the savvy CSI to say something—anything—in response to her story. 

Catherine finally cocked her head to the side and studied Beverly. “That certainly explains a lot, I’ll admit that. The ages of the bodies, the cannibalism, the killing across ethnic, gender, and age lines.”

Beverly sighed, mentally preparing herself for what she was sure to hear next-- a well-meaning but condescending “we’ll take that into consideration,” the cop equivalent of a pat on the head, said in the tone of voice that fairly screamed “thank you for your suggestion, now run along and go look for Elvis down at the corner gas station.” She’d probably get The Look, too, the one that would imply that perhaps she needed to be spending less time with her childhood best friends and more time investing in a good therapist and possibly some anti-psychotic drugs. 

“You’re crazy, baby, bat-shit crazy,” she heard Richie Tozier sing-songing in her head. “Yah done, I say, yah done one too many rounds with the clown and now yah punch-drunk.” 

“I worry about you, Bevvie,” came another mental voice, less welcome, more sinister, more terrifying. “Sometimes I worry a lot.”

“You don’t believe me,” she said a loud. 

“I—“ Catherine hesitated and the pause said it all. Beverly sighed. 

“This is why we never told anyone,” she said. “And this is why the murders have gone on for so long. When you grow up, you stop believing in the things you can’t see, the monsters under the bed, the skeletons in the closet. And that’s what It wants … that’s what It counts on … It can scare kids to death and It can rely on the fact that It can do so without ever having an adult figure out what’s going on. Who’s going to believe that a kid really saw a mummy standing on the frozen river, a leper in the old abandoned house, a werewolf in the school basement? Who’s going to protect them at night when they know there’s something in their closet and their parents know just as well that there isn’t?”

“Surely you can see how hard this is to believe …”

“You think I can’t see that? I didn’t believe it myself until I heard the voices of my dead classmates calling up to me from out of my drain. I didn’t believe it until I watched it nearly kill my best friends. I didn’t WANT to believe it. But suspend your disbelief for one second and answer me this—what’s the more likely explanation for that cave full of bodies in the Barrens? A town full of cannibalistic serial killers who hunt children and save their leftovers? Or an evil older than the Earth that sees us as nothing more than Its feeding trough?” She stood and gathered her shawl around her shoulders. “Either way, good luck falling back to sleep with that in your head.”

She swept out of the room and up the stairs, back to the room she was sharing with Ben, back to his strong arms, the pleasant scratch of his beard, the warmth of his body against hers, her second defense against the most terrifying monster she’d ever faced. 

And it wasn’t until she pulled off her shawl and climbed into bed that she realized with a start that she’d left her first line of defense downstairs—her slingshot was still wedged in the cushions of her easy chair.


	4. Down Derry's Drains

Bev marched down to breakfast the next morning and sat down at the table with the remainder of the Lucky Seven, determined to formulate a plan that would finish It once and for all. 

“M-m-morning, Bev,” Bill said, passing the carafe of coffee over to her. “Sleep okay?”

“Not really,” she replied, pouring herself a mug and dumping in cream. “I came down to the drawing room around 4:00 when I realized I was keeping Ben awake.” She reached out to touch her lover’s hand and he took it with a smile that made her melt inside. 

“So, what WAS she doing to keep you awake, Haystack?” Richie asked innocently, wiggling his eyebrows. “You know, you can always send Red on down to my room to keep ME awake for awhile.” He sent a leer in Beverly’s direction that had her both giggling and blushing. 

“You’re such a pig, Richie,” Eddie commented pleasantly, lifting a section of grapefruit to his lips.

“Abzolutely FEELTHY peeg, seenyor” Richie commented in his Pancho Vanilla voice, still grinning down the table at Beverly. “A roll in de muuuud with meee de seenyor-itas never forget …”

“Beep-beep, Richie,” Mike said, grinning at the comedian. “Any late night epiphanies, Bev?”

“Actually, yes,” she replied, buttering an English muffin. “I talked to Catherine from the Las Vegas CSI team. She was having trouble sleeping, too.”

Eddie looked up from his grapefruit with sudden interest. “What did she have to say? Did you tell her anything?”

“I told her everything.”

The table went still—almost comically so, thought Beverly, noting that everyone had stopped what they were doing to stare at her. 

“Are you sure that was a good idea, Bev?” Richie asked, all seriousness now. 

“What choice do we have but to tell them?” she replied. “As Bill pointed out, they’re going down there today, right into Its lair. They need to know what they’re up against.”

“What did she say?” Ben asked, his hand warm in hers. “When you told her?”

“She didn’t believe me, of course. Why should she? She’s a scientist and for all she knows we’re a bunch of lunatic serial killers. But I at least gave her something to think about.”

“Do you think she will?” Eddie asked. “Think about it, I mean?”

Beverly shrugged. “I think that it’s like a mind worm—now that it’s in her head she’ll have no choice BUT to think about it. But whether she tells the others or does anything with it …”

“So she and the rest of her group are going to go waltzing right down into Pennywise’s lair this morning and we’re just going to let them?” Ben asked, frowning. 

“We c-c-can’t exactly do eh-eh-anything to stop them, B-B-Ben,” Bill pointed out. “And m-m-maybe it would be b-b-better if something d-d-did happen down there. N-n-not a k-k-killing or m-m-maiming … P-P-Pennywise won’t see them as a th-th-threat just yet … but m-m-maybe if they suh-suh-see something …”

“Maybe if they see something they’ll be convinced that we’re not bat-shit crazy,” Richie finished. “That about it, Big Bill?”

Bill nodded, sweat glistening on his temples from the prolonged round of stuttering. 

“Hate to say it, but I think Billy’s got a point,” Richie continued. “Maybe … and I know I’m the last person who should be saying this because I’m a whole-hearted chicken … maybe it’ll take a scare or two by Pennywise to really get them looking at what’s causing the trouble in this town. Maybe we should be focusing on what to tell them when they come up from the sewer today rather than trying to keep them from going down it.” He glanced over at Mike. “What are your thoughts, Mikey? I know you’re having some.”

Mike lifted a spoonful of oatmeal to his lips, chewed thoughtfully, formulated a response. “I think seeing is believing,” he said simply. “Let’s be ready to talk to them when they come up out of the sewer this evening.”

“If they all come up,” Eddie said darkly, his eyes on his plate. 

***

It had been a while since Jim Brass had been down in a sewer. When he’d run CSI, he’d visited the Vegas sewer and water system with regularity, looking for evidence of murders—human and animal—that had been washed down the drain with the hope of never seeing the light of day. But since becoming captain of the LVPD homicide division, Brass had had very little opportunity (thankfully) to go down into the sewers himself … that was what CSI was for. And though he had never feared going down into the sewers around Vegas … not the way he’d worried about the sewers under Manhattan, for example … he knew a moment of profound and unnatural fear when he found himself looking down the dark manhole cover in the Derry pumping station deep in the heart of the Barrens. 

“I don’t mind saying it,” Greg said, voicing all of their thoughts, “This is the creepiest damn sewer I’ve ever been in. It feels haunted.”

Jim waited for Grissom to speak up, to say something scientific that would debunk the ideas of haunting and spirits, but the entomologist was silent, making Jim wonder if he was having the same thoughts as the others. 

Sara broke the silence. “No use standing around all day. We’ve got to go in. Greggo, hand me the light when I get down to the bottom, okay?” She swung her long legs over the top of the concrete pylon, grabbed the ladder, and began to descend. 

Grissom used his flashlight to follow her descent, then immediately swung his legs over and began to climb down after her. In the beam of the group’s flashlights, Brass saw Sara steady Grissom when he reached the bottom and saw his hand close over hers for a moment before reaching into his back pocket for a disconcertingly large sewer map.

Greg went down next, then Nick. He watched Catherine descend and followed her quickly, not wanting to stay up top by himself any longer than he had to. 

Once they were all at the bottom of the ladder, they formed groups of three—Grissom with the map and a head-lamp first, followed by Sara with their gear in a backpack, and then Greg with another flashlight and extra kits. Nick had the map and the head-lamp for their group, followed by Catherine with the gear, and Jim bringing up the rear with a final flashlight and extra supplies. 

“This cave is fairly deep underground,” Grissom said, “At least a mile beneath the city. The sewers are extensive and apparently haven’t been very well mapped. Everyone stick together … no stragglers.”

They started off at a slow shuffle until their eyes adjusted to the dark and the head-lamps seemed to better penetrate the gloom. There was little talk, other than the occasional expletive when someone lost their footing. More than once they needed to stop to look at the map, all of them crowding around Grissom to take a good look at where they were headed. 

“You know the only good part of this so far?” Nick said as they got going again after their third map check. “Haven’t seen a single damn rat.”

“Don’t you find that kind of odd, though?” Sara asked. “There are ALWAYS rats in sewers. Where have they all gone?”

Catherine recalled Beverly’s story from early that morning—a story she was sure had more to do with being best friends with a horror novelist than with any basis in reality—and the photos of half-eaten victims and shuddered. If she wanted to REALLY let her imagination run away with her, she could easily imagine what had happened to all the rats … food for an evil demon when it couldn’t get child-flesh to eat. 

What are you, twelve? she admonished herself. So there’s no rats. Big damn deal. Be thankful for it instead of spinning wild theories about why there aren’t any. Nightmares and that woman’s story have got you all bent out of shape. You’re a scientist—act like it!

“Let’s just thank God for small favors and move on, okay?” Catherine suggested, deciding to take the lead. She shimmied past Grissom, who was more than happy to let her take point, and began moving forward again. She hadn’t gone more than a few feet before she stumbled over something in the dark that skittered down the passage ahead of them with a clatter. 

“Goddammit, these headlamps aren’t doing anything!” She reached back. “Hand me a flashlight, Jim.” 

It was a ribcage. A heartbreakingly small human ribcage, picked almost completely clean of flesh and muscle. 

“Jesus,” Greg breathed. “Jesus Christ.”

“How did it get all the way up here?” Nick asked. “We’re still a half mile from the cave.”

Dragged, Catherine thought to herself. It was dragged here. To be eaten. Which means there might be more of whatever child this was further down this tunnel. 

She stood staring at the ribcage, trance-like, listening as Grissom set down his pack and pulled evidence bags, a camera, and other paraphernalia out of it. “Let’s document it,” she heard Grissom say. “Everyone take a light and do a careful sweep. There might be more remains. Sara, I don’t know about photos in light this low but I want you to try anyway.”

Brass’s hand on her shoulder brought her back to life. 

“You okay, Red?”

“Yeah, I—yeah. Sorry.”

“I don’t care what ‘I Am the Bug Man’ says about searching solo,” Brass whispered conspiratorially, “I’m sticking with you. This place gives me the creeps by a factor of ten.”

Unsure if he was being serious or flippant, Catherine nodded and beckoned him along behind her, training her flashlight on the concrete floor. 

Blood stains. Lovely. And bits of bone. Lovelier. She could hear cameras whirring away. 

“Jim, let me have the camera,” Catherine requested, bending to set the angled photomacrographic reference scale by the bone chips so that they’d have a good size reference when the pictures came up on the laptop later. 

“How fresh are you thinking?” Sara called into the darkness. “The bones are picked clean but the blood is still tacky in some of the larger pools.”

“Less than 24 hours then,” Greg responded automatically and then backpedaled, “Whoa, wait, our serial killer was down here less than 24 hours ago? That’s…. unnerving.”

“I’m not as unnerved by that as I am by the fact that there’s not a single bit of flesh left on these bones,” Nick said, plastic rustling as he bagged the evidence. “I don’t pick ribs this clean when I eat BBQ.”

Catherine lifted the rib fragment between gloved fingers and sealed it in an evidence bag, shifting into the light until she could see well enough to sign her initials to the evidence tag. She rose and kept sweeping with her light, Jim doing the same on the opposite side of the tunnel. 

“How far back do you want us to go, Gil?” she called. “There’s miles of tunnel here—it could take hours to backtrack all the way and do a thorough search.”

“Take it back about 200 feet at least,” he responded. “Back to the last place we stopped to check the map.”

Catherine nodded, turned, and began a slow shuffle back down the passage the way they had come, Brass following behind her and doing a second sweep. The roar of water from tunnels overhead was louder the further back she went. She remembered her own trips down into the Vegas sewers—twice with Warrick on a case and once into a drainage canal to rescue Lindsey from her father’s wrecked and sinking car. 

She came to a juncture in the wall that she hadn’t noticed on her trek down the tunnel, a juncture with a ladder leading to a man-hole cover that spit the unlucky climber into the pipes up above that were rushing with water. She trained her flashlight on the ladder then moved closer when she saw a glint of fluid too dark to be water on one of the rungs.

“Help me.” 

The voice came from the pipes above her, a high, keening voice with a sobbing echo. 

“Help me.”

“Hello?” Catherine called, stepping closer and onto the bottom-most rung to better hear. “Is someone there?”

“Help me!” The cry was gaining strength and now had a watery edge to it, as if whoever was yelling had a gurgling mouthful of water. “Help me!”

“I’m coming!” Catherine dropped her pack, hurried up the rungs of the ladder, and pushed at the heavy cover with all of her might. “Hold on!”

The cover scraped out of the way and Catherine threw her shoulder against it to move it further. She climbed up the ladder rungs until her head and shoulders were up through the cover and she was standing in the middle of a concrete stand-pipe around which water flowed in rushing torrents. She aimed her flashlight down the pipe in first one direction, then the other, looking for the child who was shouting for help. 

Darkness in both directions. 

But the scream came again. 

“Help me! Help me!”

Catherine aimed the flashlight down the pipe to her left, away from the rest of her team in the tunnels below. And in the dim luminescence, she saw a bobbing head, dark and wet as a seal, clinging to a ladder down the tunnel. 

“I’m coming!” she yelled. “I’m coming to get you. Don’t move!” She scrambled up the ladder and swung her leg over the lip of the stand-pipe and into the water. 

From faintly down the tunnel below her she heard Brass call her name and she yelled incoherently down the ladder to him before slogging through the hip deep water toward the child. 

“Help me!” The screams were more penetrating. “Help me, Mommy!”

“I’m coming!” Catherine yelled, pushing harder against the current. “Keep hanging on!” 

The voice was more strident, more shrill, and it sounded familiar. 

“Help me, Mommy! There’s water in the car!”

“Help me, Mommy! Daddy’s sick and the car crashed into the water!”

“Help me, Mommy! I can’t break the window!”

Lindsay. The little girl crying down the tunnel sounded like Lindsay, the same terrified, panicked screams she’d heard over her cell phone when Eddie’s car had crashed into a drainage canal and her daughter had nearly drowned. 

Lindsay. 

“Help me! Help me, Mommy!”

She was a few yards away and the pull of the water was getting harder to resist. Catherine grabbed for the ladder nearest the girl, hooked her arm around it, and reached. “Grab my hand! Grab it!”

The girl turned, reached out a grasping hand …

And it was Lindsay looking back at her, Lindsay’s dead and rotting face, Lindsay’s green tinged skin and staring blue eyes, Lindsay’s tangled hair. And the hand in hers was the sloughing, putrid skin of a corpse. 

“Help me, Mommy,” the horrible dead thing with her daughter’s face and voice intoned. “Help me, Mommy.”

Catherine screamed and pulled her hand back but the thing’s clammy grip was preternaturally strong and it held on, pulling until Catherine’s arm felt ready to rip from its socket. 

“We float down here,” the thing said in a voice that reminded her of clotted leaves and clogged drains and slime coated bones. “We all float. And you will, too.”

Immediately, inexplicably, Beverly’s story from early that morning came back to Catherine and she shouted the first thing that came into her head, the only thing that sounded right, at the rotting corpse of her daughter. “You’re not real! YOU’RE NOT REAL!”

“Cath!” came another voice from down the tunnel. “Catherine, are you okay?”

“Jim!” Catherine yelled desperately. She pulled again. “You’re not real! You’re NOT REAL! You’re NOT my daughter!” 

The words seemed to loosen the vise-like grip and as suddenly as the be-slimed fingers had settled on her wrist, they were gone. The corpse bobbed underwater and was swept down the tunnel with the torrent rushing by Catherine’s legs. 

“Catherine.” Jim’s head and shoulders appeared and when he saw her, sagging against the ladder, his eyes widened in alarm and he swung his legs over the stand-pipe and into the tunnel. “What are you doing up here?”He made it to her side quickly and touched her shoulder. “What happened?”

“Lindsay,” she murmured, staring at him with wide, haunted eyes. “I saw Lindsay. And she was dead.”


	5. Just Not Empirically Possible

“I’m not crazy,” Catherine insisted. 

Brass raised an eyebrow at her tone. “I never said you were. Did you at any point hear the words, ‘Catherine, you’re crazy,’ fall from my lips?”

“You’re thinking it,” she accused as they slogged back up the tunnel to join the rest of the team, waterlogged and shivering. 

“Now you can read minds?” He stopped her. “Cath, I don’t think you’re crazy. I think you heard something… I just don’t think you heard what YOU think you heard.”

“Oh? If I didn’t hear a child yelling for help, what DID I hear?”

“The white noise of the water,” Brass said firmly. “You ever listen to the sound of the air conditioning and swear you hear voices or a radio somewhere in the house? Same concept. You heard the water and thought you heard a voice.”

“I DID hear a voice, Jim. I heard it calling for help. And there WAS something there.”

“A corpse. With Lindsay’s face.”

“When you say it like that, I DO sound crazy,” Catherine grumbled.

“Look, we’re down here in the dark, walking toward a cave full of cannibalized victims of serial killers. We’re still jet-lagged. I heard you say at breakfast you were up with nightmares. Put all of that together with the dire warnings from Grissom’s group of wackos yesterday and I can see where you’d be prone to …”

“Imagine things,” Catherine finished drily. 

“Anyone ever tell you how infuriating you are?”

“Anyone ever tell YOU--” She broke off the retort and sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m a little spooked.”

“It’s okay.” Brass touched her arm lightly. “Just don’t go running off on your own again. It’s weird but sound doesn’t really carry down here … I almost didn’t find you in that standpipe.”

They had reached their group again, who had just finished documenting, bagging, and tagging. 

“You guys go for a swim?” Greg asked, perplexed. 

“Just following some evidence,” Brass answered, glancing at Catherine. “Come on. Let’s get to this damn cave all ready.”

***  
They had all worked mass graves before, but nothing like this. The Derry police and the forensics teams from Bangor were just as far out of their depth. The sheer enormity of the cave and the immense number of victims filling it overwhelmed them all. The pictures hadn’t been able to do it justice. The cave—lair, Catherine recalled, for a monster we call It—was deep and high and was crammed wall to wall with cocoon wrapped victims. 

“If insects could hoard this is what the inside of a trapdoor spider’s lair would look like,” Greg said, gazing up and up and up toward the ceiling. “How in the hell are we going to get them all down?”

“We’ve got two cherry pickers on their way down.” The Derry police chief was suddenly at Greg’s elbow. “You with Vegas CSI?”

“Greg Sanders. That’s my boss, Gil Grissom.”

“And there’s Jimbo. How you doing, Jim?” The chief, Andrew Rademacher, exchanged firm handshakes with Brass, Grissom, and Greg. 

“Andrew, glad you called. This is one hell of a mess,” Brass said, taking the lead for the moment. “How’d you find all this?”

“Damndest fucking thing. Got a phone call—anonymous one—telling us that there was a body down in the Barrens. For Derry, it isn’t all that unusual to find a body down there, so we sent down a recovery team. Body was half in, half out of the entrance to this place, just out in the open where anyone could find it. When we saw what was in here, we called you guys … never handled anything quite like this before. We’re a quiet town full of quiet people.”

“With a murder rate triple that of the largest city in Maine,” Grissom added bluntly. “You don’t find that a little odd?”

Rademacher met Grissom’s eyes and then shrugged. “Some places are just like that, I suppose.”

“Pretty big disappearance rate, too,” Sara added. “Especially for kids and teens.”

Again, a shrug. “Kids get itchy feet.” It was obviously a line he’d practiced a number of times. “We do the best we can here, Mr. Grissom, Miss—“

“Sidle. Sara Sidle. These disappearances have been going on since the 50s, Chief. And you’re just now finding the bodies?”

Rademacher was beginning to look seriously displeased. “A lot of places to hide down here,” he said, gesturing around him at the wild tangle of bushy, shrubby undergrowth. “A lot of places to dispose of things people don’t want found--old carpets, burned out appliances, deer shot out of season. Most folks just stay out of here. Nasty place to go. Worse place to play, but that doesn’t stop the local kids from building dams and forts and climbing trees and playing jungle explorer. Point is,” he reiterated, “there are lots of places to hide.”

Brass shot Sara a look that clearly said “don’t piss off the locals” and turned back to Rademacher. “So, I’m assuming you want PERKs on each victim—skin, hair, scrapings, DNA, photos, blood-- is that about right?”

“Be a big help. Some of these we can ID on sight. Others though … hell, Jim, some of them we didn’t even know were missing. Found a couple of teens in here yesterday that we all assumed up and moved to Castle Rock when they dropped out of school. And a lot of these are too far gone to be IDed any way other than DNA.”

“All right.” Jim turned to Grissom. “Dr. Grissom here is in charge of the forensics teams, so he’s the one you’ll want to talk to about orchestrating all of this. As of now, I’m just another one of his guys. Gil, it’s your show.”

Grissom split his team into pairs, then sent them off to three separate areas of the cave—Jim and Catherine straight back, Greg and Nick off to the left, he and Sara off to the right—with instructions to divvy up the victims amongst themselves. Each CSI was to complete a Physical Evidence Recovery Kit—PERK—for each victim, log the evidence, and then set a colored and numbered versa-cone by each victim as they worked. At the end of each hour, they’d take a tally of how much work had been done by each team member and try to calculate roughly how many days they’d be required in the cave to collect evidence from all the victims. 

But what was a logical, ordered, and imminently scientific plan of attack in theory did not go so well in practice. As Rademacher had pointed out, some victims took longer to work with than others, especially those that were missing key body parts that would have helped with IDs—hands, faces, torsos. Others were so badly decomposed that they were nothing but skeletons and, of those, most had been picked so clean that there was literally no tissue or trace evidence on the bodies at all. Even the marrow had been sucked clean off the bones. The cocoon-like fiber was tough to get off—its tensile strength was enormous, Grissom noted, like that of a spider—and in many cases adhered stickily to the remains. It was painstaking, agonizingly slow work. 

By the end of the first two hours in the cave, they’d managed between them to unwrap and PERK 36 victims. To the tired CSI team, it felt as though it was only the tip of the iceberg. 

“Okay,” Sara said with a sigh, palming back a strand of sweaty hair, “I think it’s time for a break.”

The Derry cops and other forensics teams had been taking a break for the last half hour. Grissom nodded and gestured for his team to come to the front of the cave. 

“We had some drinks and sandwiches brought down for you all from the diner,” Rademacher said, walking over to Brass and Grissom. “Put ‘em over in the clearing with some folding chairs.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of a small circular clearing just ahead of the tangled underbrush that marked the edge of the Barrens. He studied them shrewdly. “Wouldn’t want your job for anything in the world today.”

“Honestly, Andrew, if it’s you who has to take down this son-of-a-bitch, I don’t think I want yours,” Brass responded. “Thanks for the refreshments.” He headed for the cooler and folding table where sandwiches and wrapped desserts were waiting to be grabbed and consumed. 

“Is it just me, or does that guy give anyone else the creeps?” Sara asked Greg, sotto voce. 

“Not just you,” Greg replied. “Definitely not.”

They all sank gratefully into the folding camp chairs with cold drinks and snacks. Sara took a look around the clearing, taking in the denim blue sky, the thick green foliage, listening to the chuckle of water from the stream just barely visible at the edge of the woods. 

“Rademacher said this is a nasty place to play but I can’t imagine any other place I’d have played when I was a kid,” she mused aloud. 

“I thought you were the kind of kid who played with chemistry sets,” Grissom said, giving her a warm smile. 

“I was. But I liked to be outside, too. I was a tomboy, always playing with the neighborhood boys, climbing trees, roller-skating, falling down and busting my knees and elbows.” She pointed to a scar on her left elbow. “Got that one falling out of a palm tree when Derek Masters dared me to climb up to look for coconuts.” 

Grissom laughed. “I’m glad not all your memories of childhood are sad ones,” he said quietly. 

Sara gave him her signature gap-toothed smile. “Me, too.” She peered around the clearing. “It’s a little disappointing to know such a beautiful place holds so much danger and decay.” She thought for a moment. “We should talk to those men and women from yesterday. Get them to show us around. Didn’t they tell you they used to play down here?”

Catherine looked up from her phone—she’d been busily texting someone ever since she came out of the cave—and said, “I talked to one of them last night.”

“Who?” Grissom asked, turning his attention on Catherine. 

“Beverly Marsh.”

“The designer?” Sara asked and then shrugged when Catherine shot her an ‘I can’t believe you know that’ look. “What? You think I don’t buy clothes?”

“Yes, the designer,” Catherine said, grinning. “She was down in the drawing room at 4am. We talked a little bit about—“ monsters that take the shape of the thing you’re most afraid of, eat kids, and live in the sewers under Derry “—what she thinks is causing the deaths. She had some theories to offer.”

“Such as?” Grissom asked, his curiosity piqued. 

Catherine hesitated for so long that Sara wondered if she hadn’t heard the question. “Let’s just say that what she told me was more science-fiction than science fact.”

“Come on now,” Nick chimed in. “What did she tell you?”

“She and her friends, the other five people you met yesterday, Gil, have been hunting this killer since they were 12 years old. They knew what was killing all of these people even back then.”

“And they didn’t go to the cops?” Greg broke in, until Nick waved him quiet. 

“They couldn’t. They didn’t think anyone would believe them.” Catherine shrugged. “I’m not sure I believe them.”

“Catherine, out with it,” Nick prodded. “What did she tell you?”

“There’s something living under the city,” Catherine finally said. “Something that eats children.”

The silence was so prolonged that Sara wondered if she’d fallen asleep and dreamed Catherine’s explanation. Then Nick said, slowly, “A 42-year-old woman believes there’s something—not some ONE but some THING—that’s killing and eating these victims? Something that lives under the city? Look, I can understand a 12-year-old thinking that but not someone her age. Are you sure she’s not, you know…” Nick made the universal sign for “crazy” by twirling his finger in mid-air near his temple. 

“No,” Catherine said, quietly, “I’m not sure she’s not…” She imitated Nick’s crazy sign near her own temple. “She seemed very sincere … and very scared.”

“Well,” Greg said slowly, “if she’s delusional, she’s probably lived with the delusions for a really long time. And she might honestly be frightened of them. She probably thinks she’s telling you the truth, Catherine … the truth as she sees it, anyway.”

“You said you weren’t sure you believed her,” Grissom spoke up. “Do you have any evidence that makes you think she might be right?”

Sara watched as Catherine and Brass exchanged significant glances. “I—don’t know what to think,” Catherine said, neatly avoiding the question of evidence. “Is it possible for all six of them to share the same detailed, precise delusion? Because it isn’t just Beverly that believes it. All of them do.”

“There’s mass hysteria, mass hallucinations, cult mentality” Nick replied. “Sure. All six of them could be under the same delusion. It’s not uncommon.”

“Yeah, but …” Catherine leaned forward to meet Nick’s gaze, very earnest. “Nicky, these are all REALLY successful people we’re talking about here, people who could not be as successful as they are in their fields if they’re as delusional as they sound. There’s Beverly Marsh, a fashion designer. Bill Denbrough, a horror novelist. Ben something or other, an architect.”

“Hanscom,” Grissom put in. “He designed the BBC Communications Center in London. It’s an amazing feat of architectural and engineering genius.”

“Ricky Dosier, a Los Angeles DJ.”

“Richie TOZIER?” Greg yelped. “Trashmouth Tozier from Sirius XM? God, that guy’s INSANELY talented! He’s so funny! He’s here, in Derry? Right now? At our hotel?”

Sara laughed a little at Greg’s nerdy freak-out and laid a hand on his arm. “Chill, Greggo. Who else, Catherine?”

“Eddie someone, he owns a limo service in Manhattan. And someone else …”

“Mike Hanlon,” came a new voice, interrupting their conversation. “If you’re talking about Tozier and Kaspbrak and those other losers, you’re only missing one more—Mike Hanlon. He’s the town librarian.” Rademacher’s laugh was cruel as he walked over to the group. “Thinks he’s some amateur detective, always showing up at crime scenes and writing in those journals of his. He and the rest of that little gang used to pal around together down in the Barrens, always playing explorer.” He turned to Catherine and his eyes were hard. “I see you met our little band of hometown heroes. Everyone’s so damn proud of their success. Hanlon’s the only one who never made it out—he stayed behind when he couldn’t make something of himself. He was the only one in that club who grew up a loser and then stayed a loser. I wouldn’t pay any attention, Ms. Willows. You’re not likely to learn much from troublemakers like Hanlon. Better to listen to us—we know which way the wind is blowing here in Derry.” 

Something about the way he said it made Sara’s skin crawl. She shuddered a little and automatically rubbed her arms in spite of the heat of the day. 

“We finally got those cherry pickers down the hill and into the cavern,” Rademacher said. “We’ll get most of the bodies off the ceiling and upper walls and bring ‘em down for you all to ID.”

“That’s fine, Chief, thank you,” said Grissom, standing. “We’ll be right behind you.”

Rademacher walked off, his arms swinging, whistling slightly, and as Grissom watched him go the frown deepened on his face. 

“We’ll finish this later,” Grissom said softly. “Let’s get back to work.” He caught Catherine’s arm and talked quietly to her as they headed back to the cave. 

Sara paused for a moment to look back at the leafy tangle of undergrowth that looked as though it was encroaching on their little clearing. A flash of something orange caught her eye and she started toward it. 

“Sara!” Greg called. “Come up with me on the cherry picker!”

“Okay,” she yelled in return, turning her back on the blaze orange object, wondering why she hadn’t noticed it when she’d studied the woods moments earlier. She shrugged it off as a remnant of jet-lag and insomnia and turned to follow Greg… but her mind remained stubbornly fixed on how, exactly, a fluffy orange pom-pom that looked brand new had found its way to the edge of the woods.


	6. What Nick Stokes Saw

With Sara and Greg up in the cherry picker, Nick and Grissom teamed up to continue work in the area of the cave where the oldest bodies seemed to be housed. Most of what they unwrapped was nothing more than piles of bones that had been picked clean—there was nothing on or around them that would allow for DNA testing. Nick whistled under his breath as he peered at one of the piles of bones he’d just unwrapped.

“This is crazy, Gris. I’ve never seen bones at a murder site this clean of debris. There’s no tissue or muscle left, no marrow, nothing for DNA to use. And look--” He pointed at grooves on the bone. “Does that look like a series of saw marks to you?”

Or gnaw marks, Grissom couldn’t help thinking, and then sternly banished the thought. “Document it and move on, Nicky,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of victims that we can ID waiting for us. Let’s just move through these as quickly as we can.”

They worked quickly but methodically, photographing, swabbing, documenting, and then setting the piles of bones aside in sealed plastic bags for later processing and storage—or burial, assuming they could ID the poor souls who had wound up in the cave. 

“Hey, Gris,” Nick said as he finished sealing a bag with evidence tape. “About what Catherine was saying earlier … what do you make of that? I mean, that didn’t sound like Catherine.”

“Indulging in speculation about ‘things’ that live under the city and eat children, you mean?” Grissom replied. “You’re right. It doesn’t sound like Catherine.”

“Do you think maybe this case is getting to her? Because it’s kids? It probably reminds her of Lindsay.”

“I think that if Catherine’s even taking into consideration what she heard, then she must have found it to be pretty convincing.”

Nick shot his boss a look. “How is a child-eating monster that lives in the sewers anything that you can take seriously? It’s like the premise of some cheesy Sci-Fi mini-series.”

Grissom returned the look. “Don’t make me quote ‘Hamlet’ at you, Nick.”

“Look, religion and mysticism and all that is one thing. People who think they’re aliens and vampires and werewolves are a whole other … and we’ve dealt with that stuff, so that can of crazy I can roll with, even if I don’t understand it. But this? A monster in the sewers? Eats kids for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? I’m sorry, man, but that I can’t roll with.”

“But then how do you explain all of this?” Grissom asked logically, gesturing around the cave. “This isn’t multigenerational cannibalistic serial killers and their storage locker, Nick, no matter how much we—and apparently Rademacher—want to pretend it is.   
Something else did this—killed these children, wrapped them up in spider silk, gnawed their bones. We just have to find out what.”

Nick stared at Grissom and shook his head. “Man, you are the LAST person I would ever imagine taking something like this at face value.”

“I don’t know that I am,” Grissom replied. “But I do know there’s something going on in this town, this cave, that isn’t normal, something that isn’t explainable by science. Once we get some more facts, then I’ll decide what I do and don’t believe.”

“You make it sound really simple.”

“You just have to suspend your disbelief.” Grissom picked up a cardboard box full of bagged and tagged bones. “I’m taking this up to Rademacher. I’ll be right back.”

Nick shook his head and grabbed one of the portable battery operated lanterns they were using to light their work area before stepping further back into the cave. They were nearing the back wall and victims were thinning out. His light glinted on something metallic and he bent to examine it—a golf-ball sized lump of misshapen silver. He picked it up and peered at it. There was no tarnish on it, despite being in the damp cave. He went to open an evidence bag to log it, but found himself sliding the lump of silver in his pocket instead, compelled by something he couldn’t understand or control. 

“Mother’s earrings, baby,” he heard a voice—NOT his own—whisper in his mind. “Solid silver.”

And then another voice, different from the first, with a distinct stutter: “I-i-it’s silver. It can kill It.”

Nick shook his head sharply—where the HELL had those thoughts come from?—and trained his light on the back wall of the cave. He spied one more body, this one more intact than the rest, and crossed to it, ready to start documenting. 

It wasn’t until he had the camera in his hand and was starting to shoot that he detected the distinct tickly feeling of a bug walking across his hand. He flicked it away impatiently and raised the camera again. 

The feeling intensified. With an involuntary shudder, he gave a sharp flap of his wrist to fling whatever was on him away. 

Ever since he’d been buried alive under a fire-ant mound, he had hated the feeling of bugs crawling on him. Bugs were a part of life at CSI, so he did his best not to show how truly bothered he was when he had to work around them. He’d even been trying to get over the fear by allowing Grissom to tutor him in basic entomology. Regardless, it was still a fear he had to actively work through, day after day.

The tickling, crawling feeling was back. Shit. He wondered if he was kneeling in the middle of an ant-hill. He aimed the flashlight around and under him, but saw nothing. 

“Okay, Poncho,” he told himself. “No ants. No bugs. No anything. Get a grip and get this body documented.”

He leaned over to get a close-up of teeth in the pitifully small mouth…

… and a horde of fire ants swarmed out of the body and up and over his arm. They poured out of the skeleton’s mouth, geysered from its chest cavity, hitting Nick like a stream of molten living lava. Nick yelled, panicked, and began beating at his arms and legs, swatting the biting creatures, tears starting to roll down his face as he felt their pincers sink in through his clothes, leaving swollen welts. 

He heard the sound of running feet and hoped like hell it was Grissom. “Get them off me!” he screamed. “Grissom! Get them off me!”

“Nick! What’s wrong, what’s happening?” he heard Grissom shout. 

“Nick!” Catherine pushed past Grissom and tried to grab him. “Nick, what is it?”

“They’re biting me! Get them off me!” In a whirl of panicked motion, he slapped at his arms and legs and chest, everywhere he felt their needle-fine feet. “Make them stop!” 

“Nicky!” Catherine screamed. “It’s not real! It’s NOT REAL!” She grabbed for his hands, forced them to his sides. “There are no ants, Nick. They’re not real.”

“They’re biting me!” he sobbed, struggling to free his hands. “Catherine, help me!”

“Listen to me, Nick, listen. They’re not real!” Catherine squeezed his wrists hard, raising her voice so he’d really hear her. “There are no ants. Focus and you’ll see. They’re not real.”

The more he listened to her voice, the more he calmed down and the easier it was to see that there really weren’t any ants—not on him, not on the body, not on the ground. But there HAD been. 

“They were there,” he panted, meeting Catherine’s steady gaze with panicked eyes. “They were.”

“I know,” she said softly, her hands moving from his wrists to close around his fingers. “I know you think you saw them. I know you think you felt them. They weren’t real.”

“They weren’t?” he asked, his voice a mangled wreck he could barely recognize. “There weren’t any ants?”

“No, Nicky.” Catherine raised a hand to stroke his hair. “No, baby. There were no ants. I promise. Okay? Look at me. I promise.”

“What the hell?” Nick managed, before he broke into tears, not caring that Grissom and now Brass were there watching. 

“It’s okay.” Catherine embraced him and he laid his head on her shoulder and sobbed terrified tears, barely noting Sara and Greg’s voices as they joined the group. 

“How did you know?” Nick whispered, pulling back to wipe at his face. “That I was seeing ants? How did you know?”

“They’re the thing you’re most afraid of,” she said softly. 

“What does that have to do with anything?” He shuddered and sank onto the cave floor, shaking from adrenaline. Catherine moved with him and sat close to him, her hand on his arm. She somehow knew that he needed the contact. 

“Because I saw Lindsay dead. Back in the sewer. And that’s what—“ she broke off. 

“That’s what you’re most afraid of,” he filled in. “But what does that have to do with--” And then he broke off because he knew suddenly and with certainty what she was about to say. “This monster you were talking about. This kid-eating monster. It—“

“Takes the shape of the thing you’re most afraid of,” Catherine finished softly. “Beverly told me.”

“But that’s— Catherine, that’s just kid’s stuff! That’s horror novels and sci-fi movies! That’s not real.”

“Oh no?” she asked. “Then why were you just attacked by a horde of invisible fire ants?”

“’Scuse me!” Sara broke in. “Does someone want to fill us in on what’s going on?” She bent down to study Nick’s face. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“Look, I—I must have just had a panic attack or something,” he replied, glaring at Catherine. “There’s no other RATIONAL explanation for it.”

“Look, Nick, I know it sounds weird but—“

“No, it doesn’t sound weird,” Nick replied, making air quotes around ‘weird.’ “What’s weird is believing in the Loch Ness Monster or having séances for your Great Aunt Pearl with an Ouija board. This whole ‘monster under the city that eats kids’ stuff is flat out crazy. It’s some lame ass excuse made up by a group of psychopathic killers who don’t want us finding their hide-out and arresting them on several hundred counts of murder! If you believe that kind of bullshit, Catherine, maybe you need to look at whether or not you should actually be here. If you can’t handle it, go on back to Vegas and send Hodges out instead. He wouldn’t be wasting our time with this kind of ‘woo-woo’ nonsense.” 

Nick got to his feet and stormed out of the cave. Greg trailed after him to talk him down. 

“WHOA,” Sara said softly. “And I thought I was the loose cannon.” She turned to Catherine. “He didn’t mean it, Catherine. He’s upset.”

“Oh, I think he did,” Catherine replied, biting her lower lip and trying to hide how stunned and hurt she felt at Nick’s tirade. “I think he meant every word.” 

“Sara’s right,” Brass said, joining the two of them on the cave floor. “He’s scared and upset and lashed out at the closest target. Don’t take it personally.”

“He questioned my ability to do my work, Jim, how can I NOT take that personally?” she asked stiffly. 

“By remembering that Nick likes and respects you,” Grissom put in. “You know he does, Catherine. He shows it every day. This wasn’t Nick just now—that was someone who’s just had to re-live the most traumatic event of their life a second time. You can’t take it personally.”

Catherine blew a long breath out and nodded haltingly. “I hate it when you’re right.”

Grissom shrugged and gave her a small half-smile. “I can try to be wrong more often if it would make you feel any better.” He extended hands to both Catherine and Sara and helped them up. “If something like this happens again,” he said, looking right at Catherine, “what’s the best way to handle it?”

“Do the same thing I did with Nick,” she said. “Remind yourself it isn’t real. Apparently this—thing—whatever it is—tries to scare you by taking the shape of the thing you’re most afraid of. According to Beverly, the first step to overcoming that fear is to just keep telling yourself it isn’t real.”

Sara looked worried. “What if we can’t? I mean, Nick couldn’t.”

Catherine met Jim, Sara, and Grissom’s eyes. “That’s why we have each other.”


	7. We All Float Down Here ...

It didn’t surprise Beverly that Catherine Willows came looking for her almost as soon as the CSI team returned to the Derry Inn that evening. Nor did it surprise her that the CSI immediately ordered a glass of wine when she sat down in the dining room, or that she gulped down the cabernet as if it were water. 

“What did you see?” Beverly asked without preamble. 

“My daughter. Dead and rotting in the sewer.”

Beverly winced. None of the Lucky Seven—including poor Stan—had kids and she was glad now that Pennywise didn’t have that kind of ammunition to use against them. 

“What did you do?”

“I didn’t even realize I was doing it but I kept yelling, ‘You’re not real.’ Maybe because I heard you say that this morning when we talked.”

“Or maybe because you instinctively know how to deal with It.” Beverly took a sip from her own glass of wine. “Who else saw something?”

“My friend Nick. He thought he was covered in fire ants.” At Beverly’s questioning look, she said, “Long story.”

“And how did he react?”

“He can’t—won’t—accept it. He keeps saying he had a panic attack. He doesn’t believe in—this. Whatever this is.” 

“Do you?”

Catherine considered for a moment. “I can’t deny what’s happening. But as a scientist—“

“You trust what you can measure and quantify.”

Catherine nodded. “Nick keeps saying it’s like something out of a horror novel.”

Beverly laughed humorlessly. “Well, he is right about that.” 

“What do we do? What CAN we do? How do you fight this? And if It really is what’s been killing those kids …”

“It is.”

“Then we have to do something.”

Beverly met her gaze steadily. “Have the rest of your team come down to the drawing room. I’ll call the rest of my guys. We may as well lay all the cards out on the table.”

***

Grissom, Sara, and Brass immediately answered her text and came down to the drawing room. It took Greg a few minutes longer and Catherine imagined he only came down because of the promise of meeting Richie Tozier. Nick didn’t answer at all. 

“Just let him be,” she told Grissom, when he made a comment about running upstairs to get Nick. “You can talk to him one on one later … he’ll actually listen to you.”

The rest of Beverly’s friends—the Lucky Seven, Catherine knew now—arrived in the drawing room in twos and threes and there were a few moments of introductions, hand-shaking, and drink pouring before everyone took a seat in chairs and on couches, looking expectantly at Beverly and Catherine. 

“It’s time to bring everyone up to date,” Beverly said. “Those of you who aren’t from Derry have probably noticed a lot of strangeness here in town and by now you probably have some questions for us.” She gestured to the remainder of the Lucky Seven. “We’ll do the best we can to answer those questions, although there might be some things you’ll ask that we simply don’t have explanations for. I know from talking to Catherine that you’re all trained as scientists and therefore might be skeptical about what’s happening in Derry … the only answer I can give you is that, as hard as it is to believe, there are six of us here who can vouch for what we’ve seen and experienced—and if you dig deeper into Derry’s history, you’ll see that there are many other people here who have seen and heard things, too … they just don’t want to admit it.”

Catherine picked up the narrative, looking at the other members of the Lucky Seven. “We’ve only been in Derry for 24 hours, but we all know there’s something strange about this town. When we arrived, Dr. Grissom pointed out that the murder rate in your little town is triple that of any other town in Maine—not just for its size, but for ANY size. He also pointed out the large number of disappearances and child murders. Apparently, Derry just isn’t a safe place to live.”

Richie snorted under his breath. “You got that right!”

“When we went down into the sewers today,” Catherine continued, “to look for evidence in the tunnels leading up to the cave, I saw something I couldn’t explain. I saw my daughter, who is at this moment, alive and well in Las Vegas, dead and rotting in a sewer tunnel. I saw her when I followed a voice that was shouting from the pipe above me.”

Beverly turned sharply toward Catherine. “You heard a voice in the pipes?”

Bill looked at both women closely. “I-i-isn’t that what happened to you, B-B-Bev? The night the blood—“

Beverly nodded, her face pale. “I heard that, too,” she told Catherine. “30 years ago. A little voice came out of the pipes and up the drain in my bathroom sink. It said—“

“Help me,” both women said together, eyes locked. 

“A-a-and you saw your daughter?” Bill asked Catherine.

“Yes,” she whispered. “She was dead. Drowned and decomposing. But shouting for help. And she said something else, too, only it wasn’t in her voice.” She struggled for words. “It was Lindsay’s voice at first but then another overlapped it. A voice that sounded sort of like a growl. It said ‘we all …”

“Float down here. And you will, too.” 

Six voices echoed Catherine’s words. She looked around at all the members of the Lucky Seven, who were all staring at her intently. 

“What does that mean?” Catherine asked hoarsely. She shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself. 

“Like a corpse,” Eddie finally said. “You’ll float like a corpse. Down there. In the sewers.” He took a long pull on his inhaler. “God help you. It knows you’re here.”

A long fraught silence fell, which Greg broke by saying, “Okay. I’ll bite because I, for one, am lost. What the hell is It?”

It was Mike who answered the question. “It is a demon, a malevolent spirit called a Manitou that is using Derry as Its feeding grounds. It’s been here since, at the very least, 1741, the year all 340 settlers in Derry township disappeared without a trace. Every 27 to 30 years, It wakes up and feeds, starting a cycle of killings, maimings, and disappearances that drives up the murder rate and culminates in an enormous disaster. Then it falls back asleep—hibernates, if you will—until it needs to feed again.”

Grissom spoke then. “We noticed that. The spike in crime, I mean. It’s bad during any year in particular but every 30 years it gets astronomically bad.”

“And you’re saying that spike is the result of this—demon. Feeding on people. Specifically on kids,” Greg asked, trying to keep his voice carefully neutral.

“We didn’t believe it either,” Ben said. “But then—“

“Oh, hell, I believe you. It sounds like an episode of ‘Supernatural’ but I believe you,” Greg said. “I just don’t see what we’re supposed to do about it.”

Richie blinked at Greg. “Wait, that’s it? You believe us? Just like that? No proof required?”

Greg shrugged. “I’m Norwegian. I come from the people who believe the world is actually a giant tree. I may be a scientist, but I was raised with a family who loved the mythology of gods and monsters. Who the hell am I to spit in someone else’s face and say ‘you’re crazy?’ Now, granted, I haven’t seen anything yet—not like Cath and Nick have. And quite frankly, if it’s as bad as they’re describing, I don’t WANT to see anything. But that doesn’t mean I can’t try to help you stop this thing—whatever it is.”

Richie, Ben, and Mike were all grinning at Greg with admiring expressions. Richie reached over and gave the younger man a high-five while commenting, as Buford Kissdrivel, “Boy, ah-say, boy, youse a good egg, son. Youse a decent minded feller and we’re dahn, I say, dahn lucky to have ya on the team.”

“Dr. Grissom? Captain Brass? Miss Sidle?” Mike directed his attention at them. “How’s all of this sitting with you?”

Sara was the first to speak and she addressed her question to Mike. “How did you get involved with this? All of you?”

“Bill?” Mike turned to his friend. “You want to take this one?”

Bill turned to Sara. “I-I-It killed my bruh-bruh-brother, George. He wuh-wuh-was playing outside with a paper b-b-boat that we’d made and It cuh-came out of the drain. It pulled hi-hi-his arm off of his body. And It took h-h-him down into the suh-suh-sewers.”

Sara blanched. “I’m so sorry.”

“Wh-wh-when we were all together during th-th-that summer after G-G-George died, we all re-re-realized that we’d b-b-been seeing and hearing th-th-things that we couldn’t expluh-pluh-plain for months … v-voices in the drain, like B-B-Bev said. C-c-creatures that weren’t r-r-real like the m-m-mummy and the we-we-werewolf that B-B-Ben and Richie saw. M-M-Mike was attacked by a juh-juh-giant bird out by the Ironworks—R-R-Rodan sized. S-S-Stan saw a group of boys who had d-d-died in the Standpipe. Eh-Eh-Eddie saw a leper at the old house on Neh-neh-Neibolt Street. But underneath the th-th-things we saw was a clown—a c-c-clown with balloons.”

“That’s how it got close to them. What could any kid like or trust more than a clown?” Grissom murmured thoughtfully. “Especially a clown with balloons?”

“Y-y-yes,” Bill replied, nodding. “I-I-I wanted to kill It. Because it k-k-killed my brother and so m-m-many other kids in Derry. Because it w-w-was trying to kill u-u-us.” 

“And adults can’t see this because--?” Greg asked hesitantly.

“Because you grow up and stop believing in things that live under the bed, in the closet, or under the bridge,” Grissom said, eyes on Bill. “Am I right?”

“Exactly right,” Mike replied. “But it isn’t just children who have seen things here in Derry. Adults CAN see It, too. They can hear It as well. It’s just that they write It off as tricks of the imagination, things that they see and hear in the stressful heat of the moment. They talk themselves into believing that they didn’t see or hear what they thought they did. And so It loses Its power over them. It has power over children because children believe.”

“So, if I were to talk to some of the old timers around here,” Brass, who had been quiet up until now, put in, “people who remember the summer you were kids, I might get some stories of things that they can’t explain, stories of voices in drains, maybe?” He looked at Catherine as he said it. 

Mike nodded. “After Betty Ripsom disappeared the winter before we fought It, her parents both heard her voice from down in the drain while doing the dishes. Betty’s mother heard other voices besides her daughter’s. In fact, she heard a whole group of them, laughing and howling and screaming, and they told her that their name was Legion.”

Sara shuddered. “God, that’s terrifying.”

Mike nodded. “And in the face of that kind of horror, what do you do? You shut it down. You act as if it never happened. Which has allowed It to roam unchecked in Derry for hundreds of years. Until we decided to stop It.”

“How?” Brass asked the one question that was on all of their minds. “How do you stop a shape-shifting demon? And, for the record, I can’t believe I just said that with a straight face and with all seriousness. This is insanity.”

“But you believe it, don’t you?” Mike asked, studying the detective. “If you didn’t you wouldn’t still be sitting here. You’d be upstairs like your friend.”

Brass furrowed his brow and frowned. “Look, I’m not a philosophical man. I don’t have that kind of mindset. I leave the deep thinking to Grissom over here. But there is something … wrong with Derry, something I can’t put my finger on. It feels …” He shook his head. “I know this sounds crazy but, hey, I’ll follow you down the garden path …. it feels like this house down the street from where I grew up, this run-down old house with broken glass and shutters, peeling paint, the whole nine-yards. The story was that a man had killed his wife and two kids there, had just taken a shotgun and blasted them to kingdom come while they slept. The ghosts of the wife and kids were supposed to still haunt that house. Same old story—every town has one. And like every smart-ass kid who decides to show he’s got balls of steel, I went in there with some friends when I was a kid—maybe 11 or 12.” 

Brass looked from person to person and found that he had a captive audience. He took a quick swallow of his drink and continued. 

“There’s a difference between the kind of haunted houses you go to on the Atlantic City boardwalk and the kind that are actually haunted. There’s a feel to them, a presence almost … and there was a presence in that house. I know it wasn’t just being a kid with an overactive imagination that made me sense it … there were grown men in my hometown that wouldn’t go near that place even in broad day light. It felt …” Brass searched for words. “Wrong. It felt wrong inside. Like all the physical dimensions of it had been twisted 180 degrees in the wrong direction. It didn’t feel evil … it just felt as if that house didn’t belong.”He broke off uncertainly. “I don’t know if I’m making sense.”

Eddie nodded encouragingly. “The house on Neibolt Street felt that way, too. Like the very fabric of it had been warped down to its subatomic particles.”

Brass met the younger man’s eyes. “That’s the way Derry feels to me. Like it’s warped and twisted. Like it doesn’t belong. Not just the sewer or the cave … everything. Hell, even this hotel feels like that. It’s like wearing clothes that don’t fit right. It chafes at your skin.” He glanced over at Mike. “So, yeah, I believe there’s something wrong here. I can feel it. I don’t know what to think about it … but I’m not going to deny that it’s here.”

Mike nodded slowly. “And that’s really the crux of it all,” he said, addressing the whole group. “Belief. In some way or another, It is strengthened by the fear of Its victims. And It is weakened by our belief that we can fight It and kill It. Now when you went down there nine days ago--” he looked at Richie, Eddie, Ben, Bill, and Beverly—“you went with a broken circle and some heavy disbelief and that, I think, is why you weren’t able to succeed in killing It. We’ll never be able to have all of the Lucky Seven back together again. Stan is dead and there’s nothing we can do to change that. But when we go back down there again, you’ll have me and now we’ll have them.” He gestured to the CSI team. “If we believe and they believe, if we can get lucky one more time, I think we might be able to kill It for good.”

“How do we do it?” Sara asked. “How do we kill It?” She looked around at the members of the Lucky Seven. “What did you use when you were kids?”

“W-w-we used s-s-silver slugs,” Bill said, grinning a little sheepishly. “A-a-and a slingshot. B-b-but it didn’t do much g-g-good, seeing as I-i-it’s back.”

“We tried the same thing last week,” Ben said. “Silver slugs and a slingshot. But there’s more to it than that. It’s what Mike was saying … it has more to do with the BELIEF that we can kill it than the weapons that we’re using.”

Beverly turned to him. “What do you mean, Ben?”

“I’ve been thinking about this a lot,” he said, studying his friends. “When we went down into Its lair as kids, we had one purpose, one goal—to kill It. We went down there with the belief that our weapons could do it harm. It was our belief that the silver slugs and the slingshot WOULD do some damage that MADE it do the damage. Remember, Bev? We KNEW you could harm it with that slingshot, so you DID harm it. We KNEW the things It was making us see and hear weren’t real. We knew it and believed it and that’s why It couldn’t touch us down there in Its lair. That belief that we can do It harm was what let us hurt It so badly the first time—the force of our collective will is what makes us strong. And it was disbelief last week that got Eddie so badly hurt and that nearly got us all killed. If we’re going to go in there again, we have to do it believing that we can win. If we don’t believe, we don’t have a chance.”

Mike walked over from his chair and clapped Ben on the shoulder. “I knew eventually that one of you would understand.” 

“So if we want to kill this thing,” Catherine said slowly, “all we have to do is believe that we can?”

“Easier said than done, my dear lady,” Richie said with raised eyebrows. “You don’t know what this fucker looks like … pardon my French.”

“So, what does it look like?” Greg asked. 

“A 20 foot spider,” Richie said nonchalantly, clearly hoping to get Greg’s goat. 

Greg only grinned and turned to Grissom. “Grissom? You hear that? Is that not awesome?”

“In what universe can a 20 foot spider be construed as awesome?” Eddie asked, rubbing at his ribs.

“A 20 foot spider is awesome when you have an entomologist on your team,” Greg said, gesturing to Grissom. “If anyone can get inside this thing’s head, he can.”

“I’m an entomologist, Greg, not an expert on million year old demon spiders,” Grissom replied. He stood and stretched. “We have to go back down to the cave again tomorrow, if only to keep from arousing Rademacher’s suspicion. We have a job to do and we’re going to do it. After that, we can reconvene and work out a game plan.”

“We’ll come down to the Barrens tomorrow,” Beverly said, gesturing around to the remainder of the Lucky Seven. “Might help us get back into the mindset we had when we were kids.”

“The mindset of ‘we’re losers and everyone hates us,’” Eddie responded glumly. “That’s not something I need to be reminded of.”

“The mindset of ‘we’re together and being together makes us strong’” Beverly insisted, giving Eddie a warm hug across the shoulders. She pulled her hair down out of its ponytail and let it lie, gleaming, across her shoulders. “Even without Stannie, we CAN do this.” She looked at the CSI team. “Thank you. For believing.”

And with that, the group broke up for the night and headed to their rooms.


	8. Nightmares and Dreamscapes

Catherine woke at 1am to the sound of distressed groaning from Sara’s bed. She rolled onto her side to check on the other woman, heart trip-hammering at the prospect of what she might see looming over Sara’s bed or lurching out of the large closet. 

Sara was having nightmares—bad ones, if the sweat and tears on her face and the tossed bed sheets and pillows were any indication.   
Catherine leaned over to gently shake her friend awake. 

“Sara. Wake up.”

“Not in the trunk. No,” Sara replied, tossing her head restlessly. “Stop it, Natalie.” 

Catherine crept to Brass and Grissom’s room next door and knocked quietly. Grissom came to the door, hair rumpled. His sleepy eyes sharpened to awareness when he saw Catherine. 

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“Sara’s having nightmares. I think she’ll want you there when she wakes up.”

Grissom nodded and headed next door. Catherine slipped into the room behind him. Grissom looked up from his place next to Sara, where he was tenderly stroking her forehead. 

“Go ahead next door and sleep in my bed, Cath. I’ll stay here with her.”

Catherine nodded her assent, gathering her bathrobe, Kindle, and cell phone. “Take care of her, Gil. Good night.”

Next door she slipped into Gil’s bed—he had fallen asleep on top of the covers with a book, she noted with a small grin—and switched on her Kindle, turning onto her side to shield the light from Jim with the curve of her body. 

“Unless Grissom’s started wearing Oil of Olay, I don’t think you’re him,” came Brass’s sleepy voice from the next bed. 

Catherine rolled over and gave an apologetic smile to the homicide captain. “He’s staying in my room with Sara.”

“Did she decide that she wanted a little taste of the midnight entomologist buffet?”

Catherine giggled. “No, he’s helping her to sleep tight so the bed bugs won’t bite.”

“You make that sound so dirty,” Brass murmured. “My kind of woman. What’s he really doing in there?”

“Keeping the nightmares at bay.”

“We should all be so lucky. G’night, Red. Wake me if you need me.” And with that, he dropped back off again. 

Catherine stayed awake a while longer, reading the third in a series of Victorian era mysteries that she’d recently become engrossed in. Although the plots of mysteries were usually fairly predictable, she had gotten involved in this series and liked the period detail and the characters, especially the plucky heroine and her scientist husband. 

It wasn’t a surprise then than she fell into a dream set in Victorian era assembly rooms. The faces of the people around her were familiar—there was Sara with her hair in an elegant upsweep and Sophia wearing an outrageous hat with feathers and beads, both clad in long full-skirted dresses with low-cut necklines and elaborate beadwork. 

The men were all wearing the attire of the era—breeches with fitted stockings, buckled shoes, white shirts with puffed sleeves, embroidered vests and fitted waistcoats. There was Warrick, delectable in an emerald green waistcoat, bowing neatly to a woman in a matching green dress. She watched Grissom approach Sara and sweep her on to the dance floor where Nick was all ready dancing with Judy, who was diminutive and adorable as a china doll in yellow watered silk.

She continued to circulate among the guests, spying Greg in the military uniform of the era, Vartan, Vega, even Al Robbins, all of whom were dancing with partners. 

As she reached the glass paned double doors leading to the porch, she noted a break in the crowd. There was a circle of children—although she was fairly sure children would never have been allowed in adult assembly rooms—surrounding someone in a silver waistcoat and white stockings. When that someone turned around, Catherine saw that it was a clown with a shock of orange hair. He was wearing full greasepaint make-up—white face, blood red smile, blue triangles under his eyes-- and was performing a series of magic tricks with scarves. 

The clown’s face sent a shock of recognition through Catherine, although she was positive that she’d never seen a clown quite like this before. He resembled Ronald McDonald or Bozo, but not enough like either to be able to accuse the person under the make-up of impersonating the famous funny-men. 

It isn’t a person under there, a voice in her head shrilled. There’s nothing human in that clown. 

She studied the group of children surrounding the clown. There were seven of them—5 Caucasian males, a Caucasian female, and a black male. All were dressed in period costumes, though they didn’t look as at home in them as the adults around the room did. 

“Step right up,” the clown bugled, his voice too loud and audacious for a formal gathering. “Tee-ricks for your amusement and entertainment! All the best tee-ricks in the world! I’ll show you how to make flowers disappear!” 

He pulled a bouquet of flowers out of his sleeve, held it up, waved his hands over it, and the flowers wilted into lifeless, drooping stems with black decaying petals.

“I’ll show you how to make Eddie’s asthma disappear!”

With a jolt, Catherine realized the smallest of the boys surrounding the clown was clutching an inhaler, the same kind used by the adult Eddie Kaspbrak. She knew then that the children were the members of the Lucky Seven. 

The clown seized the inhaler, puffed it into his own mouth several times, and blew a cloud of medicinal smelling breath at Eddie, who gagged and turned away. 

“I’ll show you how to fix Trashmouth’s glasses!”

He grabbed Richie’s glasses right off the red-headed boy’s nose and unwound the tape holding the bridge together. The tape turned into a wriggling snake in his hands, which he thrust at Richie, who threw it aside with an exclamation of disgust.

“I’ll sh-sh-show you how I k-k-killed Buh-Buh-Billy-boy’s brother!”

The clown opened his—Its—mouth and distended Its jaw, showing a cavernous maw of fangs and an obscenely wriggling red tongue. 

The children shied back in disgust and grabbed hands. 

“Duh-duh-dummy up, all of you,” came the firm childish voice of Bill Denbrough, and she watched as the children formed a circle, hands joined, around the clown, trapping It in the middle. 

The circle couldn’t contain the clown, though, and It broke ranks, grabbing a handsome, dark-haired boy in a miniature military uniform and pinning him up against the glass patio doors. 

“No more Lucky Seven!” The clown laughed, a hideous pantomime of real hilarity. “Stannie’s gone into the sewers and you’re all going to join him. You’re all going to float down here with me.”

Catherine couldn’t stand it any longer. She rushed toward the clown and the boy he was holding hostage, reaching for a gun that, unfortunately, wasn’t anywhere to be found on her beautiful blood-red dress.

“Let him go!” She planted herself between the clown and the group of children.

The clown grinned at her, showing Its fangs. “He’s floating all ready anyway.” It dropped the boy to the ground and he flopped with the horrible limpness of a dead body. Catherine rushed forward to feel for the young man’s pulse but was stopped by hands on her wrist and arm. 

“Don’t!” It was young Beverly Marsh, her copper-bright hair braided and pinned up. “You can’t save him. You can only save us now.” She grasped Catherine’s wrist. “Where’s the silver?”

“I don’t have any silver,” Catherine stammered. “I don’t—“

The clown turned on her then and Its eyes shone huge and reflective. 

“Don’t you want to come down here with me?” It asked, Its eyes growing larger and blazing with bright light. “Don’t you want to come down here with Lindsay?”

In the clown’s hugely reflective eyes, which were now as big as saucers, she saw Lindsay floating in the run-off from the pipes, her body bloated and sloughing away. “Don’t you want to float down here, Catherine? Don’t you want to float?”

She jerked awake with a scream on her lips. “Lindsay!”

In the opposite bed, Brass sat up at the sound of her cry. “Cath? Are you okay?”

“He’s got Lindsay,” she panted, shaking. “He’s got Lindsay.”

“Who?” He moved quickly over to the bed and sat down beside her, laying his hand on her arm. “Who’s got Lindsay?”

“The clown,” Catherine gasped out, trying to hold back a sob. “The motherfucking clown.” She scrabbled for her iPhone, which was lost somewhere in the tumbled sheets and blankets. “I have to call her. I have to find my phone.”

“Okay, okay,” Brass soothed, helping her paw through the blankets. “Here, use mine.” He scrolled through the contacts. “Your home number’s programmed in, just hit the button.”

Catherine waited anxiously for her daughter to pick up the landline and was finally rewarded with a sleepy “hello?”

“Lindsay! Baby, are you okay?”

“Mom?” Her daughter sounded confused. “Mom, where are you? What’s going on?”

“I’m still in Maine, honey.” Catherine blew out an unsteady breath and pushed back a strand of hair with shaking fingers. “I’m sorry to wake you, sweetheart. I had a nightmare that something was wrong and I—I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“It’s okay,” Lindsay said sleepily. “I just went to bed, though, I had a late rehearsal and an essay to write.”

“But you’re okay?” Catherine persisted. 

“My brain is fried from writing about F. Scott Fitzgerald but I’m fine. Mom, are YOU okay?”

“Yeah, baby. I’m okay. I’m sorry to wake you. Go back to sleep.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow before school,” Lindsay promised. “Good night. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.” 

Catherine let the phone fall into her lap and tried to steady her breathing. 

“She’s okay?” Brass asked, not because he couldn’t tell from the conversation that she was but to get Catherine to speak to him. 

“Yeah.” She blew out a slow, hitching breath. “Jesus. That was horrible.”

“What happened?” He stood up and got her a glass of water from the tap in the sink. Then, thinking better of tap water, he passed her a half-finished bottle of water from the bedside table. “That must have been one hell of a nightmare.”

“God, yes.” She sipped but her hands were shaking so badly that the bottle slipped from her hands, spilling onto the sheets. 

“Easy,” Brass soothed, taking the bottle from her and closing her hands in his. “You’re okay. Lindsay’s fine. It was just a dream.”

“I don’t think it was,” she whispered hoarsely. “I think it was more than that. They were there, Jim, the Lucky Seven, all of them, including the one who died—Stannie. And the clown. That motherfucking clown. He was terrorizing them.” She pushed back the blankets and started out of bed. “I need to talk to Beverly. Or Bill. Or Mike. Any of them.”

“Whoa, there.” Brass kept a gentle grip on her arm. “It’s 3:30 in the morning, Cath. Knocking on doors this early isn’t going to do you or them any good. Wait till the sun’s up at least.”

“But what if—“

“Catherine.” Brass’s voice was kind but firm. “Don’t you remember what we were talking about earlier today? It WANTS you to be afraid. It thrives on fear and anxiety. You’re feeding It the more than you allow yourself to dwell on what you think you saw.” He tugged at her hands until she sat back down across from him. “I know it’s hard, but you’ve got to let it go for now. This can wait till morning.” When she opened her mouth to argue, he laid a hand on her arm and squeezed gently. “It can wait. Trust me.”

She nodded unsteadily. “Okay. It can wait.” She glanced around the room and her eyes lit on the television. “There’s no way I’m sleeping again tonight. Do you mind if I watch TV?”

“I can help you fall back asleep,” Brass said with a small smile. “Better than Conan can at any rate.” He laid a hand against her cheek and she leaned into his palm, welcoming the touch. “Come on.” 

He held the covers back and then slid in behind her. He wasn’t sure how much comfort she would be willing to take from him and was gratified when she spooned immediately up against him, her back to his chest. 

He stroked her hair away from her face and pressed a kiss to her temple, a feeling of rightness, of two interlocking pieces finally clicking together enveloping him as he touched her in the darkness.


	9. Putting Together the Pieces

Catherine was the last to leave the room in the morning. She’d fallen back asleep, surprisingly enough, when she was curled up beside Jim, who made a very comforting bodyguard, and had been slow to get moving. She was delayed even more by the promised phone call from Lindsay, but she didn’t begrudge her daughter the ten minute phone call, not with the dreams she’d been having the last few nights. 

By the time she set out to find her team, everyone was all ready in the dining room. As she headed downstairs, she caught sight of the familiar face of Bill Denbrough at the head of the staircase, ready, evidently, to join his own group for breakfast. 

“Bill,” Catherine called, walking faster. “Can I talk to you?”

“S-s-sure, Catherine. Or is it C-c-cath?”

“Either’s okay. Look, I wanted to apologize again for Nick … you’ll see him at breakfast probably, but he doesn’t really buy into any of this so talking about it isn’t going to win you any brownie points.”

“N-n-no worries. If I hadn’t l-l-lived with it myself, I wouldn’t buh-buh-believe me either. I won’t mention it to him.”

“Also …”Catherine took a moment to organize her thoughts. “I saw you all in my dream last night. All seven of you. As kids.”

“Yuh-yuh-you did?” Bill’s eyes stayed intently on Catherine’s face. “What did you s-s-see?”

Catherine gave him a quick run-down of the dream and then said, “Do you think it means anything? Beverly’s comment about the silver?” She gave him a crooked smile. “I have to admit, I thought there might be something to It’s threat about Lindsay so I called her last night and this morning.”

“I-i-it can’t hurt her. Not in Las Vegas. This is Its puh-puh-place. It won’t leave Its killing grounds.”

Catherine nodded, immensely relieved. “Good. That makes me feel better.”

“As to the s-s-silver, I don’t know what we’ll do. We’ll have to go find the s-s-slugs somewhere in the cave. If you guys see them, you will save them, wuh-won’t you? Instead of cataloguing it as eh-eh-evidence, I mean?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem. We’ll see what we can find today. Do you have a plan?”

“Nuh-not yet but I think I know the best way to cuh-come up with o-o-one.”

When Bill and Catherine walked into the dining room, they were both surprised, but very pleased, to see the members of the two groups mixing together. 

Nick, Greg, and Richie Tozier were all at a table in the corner, laughing a mile a minute as they plowed through stacks of pancakes and cups of coffee. Grissom and Ben Hanscom were having an earnest conversation that seemed to involve a lot of hand gestures. Catherine guessed it had something to do with Ben’s buildings … and then had her guess confirmed when Grissom passed him a yellow legal pad and a pen and the other man began sketching enthusiastically. Brass and Eddie were sitting just down the table from them having a conversation about restaurants and night-spots in Manhattan and Jersey that both knew. Mike, Beverly, and Sara were animatedly discussing the pros and cons of the newest addition to a science-fiction series that they had all read. 

Catherine joined Mike’s group while Bill drifted toward Ben and Grissom. 

“Morning,” she said, pouring a cup of coffee as she sat down.

“Getting a little bit of a late start?” Sara asked, giving her a sly grin. “Did someone keep you in bed this morning?”

“Did someone get a little taste of the midnight entomologist buffet?” Catherine replied pointedly, using Jim’s phrase that she’d found so amusing. 

Sara laughed, not at all embarrassed. “I would have if I hadn’t been re-living being trapped under that car all night long. But thank you for sending him in. He’s always been able to keep me calm through the nightmares.”

Mike and Beverly flashed the women questioning looks, to which Sara replied, “Our team has a tendency to get tangled up with suspects. A serial killer kidnapped me to spite my boyfriend--” She jerked her head in Grissom’s direction, “—and pinned me underneath a wrecked Mustang, hoping I’d die there before Gil could reach me.”

“Jesus,” Beverly breathed. 

Sara shrugged, unconsciously fingering the arm that had been broken under the car. “I still dream about it, even without the influence of monsters that feed on fear.” She glanced over at Grissom, Ben, and Bill. “Something going on?”

“I think Bill has a plan but since he hasn’t told me what it is, I’m just along for the ride.” Catherine reached for a muffin from the basket in the center of the table and began to peel off the paper wrapper. “Mike, tell me about Stan.”

Mike peered at her. “Did you have a dream?”

Catherine nodded but didn’t elaborate. 

“Stan was … I guess Stan was a lot like your Nick.” He gestured to the table where Richie, Greg, and Nick were still yukking up a storm. “He was the last one among us to really believe in It that summer, to see It for what It really was. Stan didn’t want to believe—It was too horrible a thing for him to conceive of. He didn’t want to think that something as illogical, as …” He stopped, searching for words, then found the one he was looking for, “unempirical, was possible.” Mike looked at Beverly. “He always used to say that, remember? ‘That just isn’t empirically possible.’ He was the scientist in our group, the fact-finder, the logician. If we had a plan, Stan was usually the last one to agree to it … not because he didn’t think we could follow through but because he never wanted to admit to himself that It was real. 

“But he never finked out on us,” Beverly chimed in, “not once. He helped me clean up the blood at my house and take the rags to the washeteria. He went down into the smoke hole with us. He cut our hands when we came out of the sewer and swore we’d come back if It wasn’t dead.” She trailed off with a sad smile. 

“But Stan didn’t come back?” Catherine prompted. 

“No,” Mike replied after a long moment. “No, he didn’t.”

“He killed himself,” Sara said slowly, realizing it before Catherine. “He couldn’t stand the idea of facing It a second time. He killed himself rather than do that again.”

“Yes,” Mike nodded. “He cut his wrists in the bathtub.”

“He broke the circle,” Catherine said, the pieces falling into place. “You were the Lucky Seven and you formed a circle, something that couldn’t be broken even by It. But now …”

“Now there are six,” Sara chimed in, “which isn’t enough.”

“I don’t know what was guiding us that summer,” Mike said. “It was some force, something as old as It and as benevolent as It is malevolent. This force needed the seven of us to work our will on It and somehow, through Bill, we did. We managed to stun It, injure It, send It back into hibernation for 30 years.”

Bill, Ben, and Grissom had stopped their conversation and slid down the table toward their group, listening to Mike’s explanation. 

“Nine days ago, just before you all were called in to investigate the cave, the others went back into the sewers to kill It. But they went without Stan—now you know why-- and they went without me—I was too badly injured. And they couldn’t touch It, not with a broken circle. Eddie came out injured, Bill’s wife, Audra, is still catatonic and has been flown back to England in her family’s care, and we’re still here, trying to figure out a way to kill It once and for all. And I think that that all comes down to how we re-form the circle. I didn’t really have any hope of that until you showed up.”

“But it’s more than just a matter of having seven people,” Ben put in. “It isn’t the number—it’s the feeling. It’s the way we fit together, the way we believe—in It and in each other. If we go in there with doubt and uncertainty, like we did nine days ago, we’re done. I think we’re better off now than we were a few days ago.”

“Are we?” Bill asked bluntly. “Th-th-there’s still the question of N-n-nick. He doesn’t buh-buh-believe. We can’t go down th-th-there with him.”

“We’re not going without him,” Grissom said firmly. “Nick is one of us. If he doesn’t go, we don’t go.”

“H-h-how can we convince him this is ruh-ruh-real?”

Ben looked around the table at them all and grinned. “The smoke hole.”

“Yes,” Mike said, catching on immediately. “But will it be big enough?”

“If it works like it did last time, it will,” Ben replied. 

“How do you know it’s even there?” Beverly asked. “It’s been 30 years, surely it’s caved in by now!”

“Oh, it’s there,” Mike replied, nodding slowly. 

“L-l-let me guess,” Bill said, studying his friend. “Y-y-you just happened to be in the B-B-Barrens one day and you m-m-made sure of that.”

“I didn’t know if we’d need it again or not,” Mike said. “All we need to do is widen it and shore it up.”

“What are you talking about?” Catherine asked impatiently. 

“A way to get answers,” Ben said, eyes shining. “A way to find out if the old magic is still here.”

“Which old magic are we talking about here?” Brass asked, joining the conversation. 

“The kind that’s going to let us beat this fucker at Its own game once and for all,” Bill said grimly, with no hint of a stutter.

“So what does that entail?” Brass asked sensibly. 

Ben raised his eyebrows. “Well … we’re going to need some shovels.”

***

They split into their usual groups—the CSIs headed to the cave, by way of the surface roads this time and not the tunnels--and the remainder of the Lucky Seven headed for the Barrens by their old route down Kansas Street, skirting the police cordon outside the pumping station so as not to fall prey to Rademacher’s questions.

Nick was back to his usual sunny self, talking a mile a minute with Greg about their breakfast conversation with Richie Tozier. He cast the Lucky Seven mistrustful looks as they loaded up Richie’s rental with shovels and boards but was obviously in too good a mood to question his newfound friend’s sanity. 

They took their time heading down the slope into the Barrens, carefully noting the landscape for evidence of body dumps and drags. Rademacher met them at the entrance of the cave with a genial smile. 

“Looks like you folks made some pretty good progress yesterday.”

“We’re making headway, yes,” Grissom agreed. “We’ve still got a long way to go though. If you have additional men who can help photograph the bodies as we’re working, that would speed things up a bit.”

“Oh, I’m sure we can manage something,” Rademacher said. He watched them closely as they began unpacking gear. “Hear you’ve been spending some time with the loser’s club over there at the Derry Inn.”

“The who?” Greg asked, pulling on gloves and protective booties. “Sara, hand me those glasses, will you?”

“Hanlon and his gang of roustabouts.”

“The Lucky Seven,” Greg corrected. “Yeah, they’ve been pretty helpful with town history.”

Rademacher sneered. “Take anything Hanlon tells you with a grain of salt. He doesn’t know what’s really going on in Derry.”

Sara straightened and began checking her camera battery. “And you do?” she asked pleasantly. 

“I know when to stop digging into graves that might contain more than skeletons.” He drew closer to Sara. “Keep in mind why you’re here and spend a little less time gossiping with the Loser’s Club.”

“That wouldn’t be a threat would it, Chief Rademacher?” she asked just as pleasantly, emphasizing his title. 

“Not at all. Just a piece of advice on how to keep your head above water, so to speak.” He stepped backward. “Afraid I don’t have the time to bring you all lunch today. I’m sure you can fend for yourselves.”

“We’ll manage,” Brass replied bluntly, frowning at Rademacher. “Ready to get started, Gil?”

Grissom nodded, studying Rademacher carefully. “Take Nick with you, Jim. Greg and Catherine, take the right side of the cave, Sara and I’ll take the left. We’ll do it just like yesterday.” As his teams worked their way into the cave, Grissom turned to the police chief. “I don’t think we’ll need those extra men after all. We can handle it on our own.”

The chief nodded with a hint of a leer on his face. “I thought that might be the way of it. Chosen sides, have you?”

“The truth doesn’t have a side,” Grissom replied, turning to go into the cave with his team. 

Rademacher watched him go, the leer never leaving his face.


	10. Two Circles Linked Together

“Absolutely not.” Nick backpedaled from the gaping hole in the ground and looked angrily around at the expectant faces of his friends. “No way. I’m out.”

Sara stepped forward to catch hold of his arm. “Nick, this isn’t like--”

“No, I get that. I do. But I’m still not getting into a hole in the ground that’s about to fill up with smoke. You can forget it right now.”

“We need you to be a part of this, Nicky,” Catherine said, her voice pleading.

“No, you don’t.” Nick glared at her. “I’m not having anything to do with this smoke hole or vision quest or whatever the hell you want to call it.” He held up a hand when Grissom opened his mouth to speak. “Now I will stay up here and pull you crazy fools out when you start keeling over from smoke inhalation, but I am not going down in that hole just because some guy you met two days ago thinks it’s going to give him visions of how to beat a monster that lives under the city that I don’t even think is real!” Nick was practically bellowing by the end of his speech. “Are we clear?”

“Look, Nick,” Richie said, taking a step toward the younger man. “I get where you’re coming from, okay? I showed up here pretty much convinced that I had lost my mind.” He waited until Nick nodded before continuing. “But I’m here because I promised my pals I would be, for better or worse. You’re part of a group, too, man, and they’re counting on you just like my group is counting on me.” He waited for the words to sink in before gesturing at the smoke hole. “Is this thing gonna work? I don’t know. But I said I was in it till the end. So if these guys are your friends—and I know they are cause you wouldn’t stop talking about them all during breakfast—they need you to stand by them, whether you think this is crazy or not. So let’s you and me stay up here top-side and keep a look out. We’ll help them out if they need it.” 

Richie shot a look at Mike and Bill, waiting for one or both of them to nod their acquiescence, then looking to Nick for a nod of affirmation. 

“Yeah, okay,” Nick said without enthusiasm. 

“All right.” Richie slapped the younger man on the back. “Come on, help me get that cooler of water out of my car.”

The two men disappeared into the underbrush and the group let out a collective sigh of relief. 

“Way to go Richie,” Catherine said, eyes tracking Nick’s departure. 

“Can we do this without Richie?” Eddie asked Ben.

“I don’t know. But we’ll have to try. At least we’re all here, even if some of us are top-side.” Ben hopped down into the hole. “Okay, we went ahead and added about five extra feet on each side, so we’re looking at a space of 20 feet by 20 feet. We’re not necessarily going to be comfortable but we’ll all fit in if we don’t mind getting a little cozy.” He pointed to the fire pit he’d made in the center. “Mike, where’s all the wood we cut earlier?”

Mike began handing it down, sticks and branches first, then logs. 

“You need kindling,” Greg said, studying the growing pile of branches.

Bill pulled a comic book out of his messenger bag. Greg stared at him in horror. “You’re going to waste a perfectly good comic book that way?”

“Th-th-that’s what we used that d-d-day. For k-ki-kindling. We want to keep it as ac-ac-accurate as we can.”

Greg nodded, but winced when Bill began tearing out pages and stuffing them between the branches. 

Richie and Nick had returned by the time the fire was built and were settled on nearby logs. Richie had Eddie’s inhaler at the ready and Nick sat by the cooler, ready to hand out water to anyone who needed it. 

“Okay,” Ben said finally. “I think we’re ready.” He looked at the members of the CSI team. “Bill explained the theory, right?” At their nods, he said, “I can’t know whether this will work again. But if that force is still here … if the Turtle is still here … then this might just call it back or, at the very least, lead us to some answers.” He peered around the circle of men and women gathered around the entrance to the underground club house, focusing especially on the members of the Lucky Seven. “You guys remember how we did it last time?”

“We stayed down until it got too hot and smoky,” Beverly said. “It was Richie and Mike who had the visions last time. They saw It come.”

Ben nodded, his face tight. “Stay down as long as you can. If you start feeling faint, though, just push up through the trapdoor and Nick and Richie will pull you out.” He aimed a look at the two men he’d just named. “Yeah?”

“Ah, sure and begorrah, me foine boy-o, we’ve got your back, your front, and both sides if you’re needin’ to come out of that hole,” Richie replied in his best Irish cop voice. 

Nick cracked a smile, which faded when he looked around at his friends. “You guys sure you want to do this?”

Grissom, answering for all of them, nodded. “Just pull us out if it gets to be too much. We’re counting on you, Nicky.”

“I’ve got your back, Gris,” Nick responded, looking at Richie. “Do what you have to.”

Grissom, in answer, jumped down into the hole and reached up to take Sara’s hand to help her down. Brass followed suit, then Greg, then Catherine. One by one, the members of the Lucky Seven came down into the hole and settled themselves on the floor. Bill, the last one down, closed the door, opened the little hinged window—the smoke hole—and looked up into Richie’s face. 

“Get the word, Big Bill,” Richie said quietly. “I don’t know what we’re going to do if someone doesn’t get it.”

“Someone will,” Eddie said quietly. “I can feel it. Someone’s going to get it. Someone has to.”

“Have some good chucks, Eddie,” Richie said with a sardonic grin, and then his face vanished from the hole. “We’re up here waiting on you,” his voice said, and then went quiet. 

As she had last time, Beverly lit the matches. She touched the flame to the pages of the comic book, which went up quickly. She looked around at the group of people sitting, intermingled, around the underground clubhouse, one member of the Vegas Six (as Beverly had begun referring to them in her mind) next to a member of the Lucky Seven. Two circles coming together. It was good, she decided—balanced—right. 

The smoke began to fill the clubhouse. There were some coughs around the circle but nothing desperate sounding—even Eddie seemed to be doing okay. Everyone settled into their own postures to wait out the smoke—some sat Indian-style around the fire, others leaned back against the wall. Sara kept her hand lightly cupped around Grissom’s. Eddie took off his glasses and perched them on top of his head. Beverly closed her eyes, leaned back against the walls and let her thoughts begin to drift. 

Beverly saw: a postcard with a haiku in neat printing--your hair is winter fire/January embers/my heart burns there, too; blood splattered on the bathroom walls and cooking on the light bulb over the sink; the bright red of Bill’s hair as he rode the gantry-like frame of Silver; Henry Bowers and his goons ambushing her outside her house, stroking her hair, touching her face; her freckled 12-year-old arm pulling back the slingshot and aiming at the clown’s leering face.

Ben blinked through the smoke curling upward and squinted at the hazy square of white light in the ceiling. It seemed impossibly far away, though it couldn’t be more than an arm’s length away from him. He tipped his head back against the wall, aware of Beverly directly across the circle, on the other side of the fire, aware of Sara to his right and Greg to his left, both of them coughing as the smoke continued to expand. 

And Ben saw: his Derry library card, its flexible, colorful plastic the most cheering thing in his small wallet; his aunt’s house and its faded walls and bedspreads, its cheerless pictures of Jesus and the Pope; seating two boards in the streambed of the Barrens with a sledgehammer and watching Bill and Eddie fill in the area in between them with gravel and rock to form the basis of their dam; a mummy standing on the frozen Kenduskeag river, dressed in a silver clown suit that rippled in the polar wind, balloons blowing toward him even as the wind battered his back; Beverly’s bright auburn hair bouncing along the middle of her back, her anklet winking above her penny loafer as she walked away from him. 

The 20 by 20 space of the underground clubhouse seemed to be expanding. Mike remembered the sensation—illusion?—from last time and knew that something was unfolding, expanding, stretching its wings. Something was happening as the circle re-formed. He listened for the coughs or the bang of the trapdoor that signaled the others had started to leave but he didn’t hear it and wondered if, this time, they’d all be allowed to stay below and share the visions. 

Mike saw: the dust and dirt rising around the group of seven grim-faced children as they stood in the dump, armed with rocks; Stan’s rare grin as it shone out when he spotted a new bird down in the Barrens; his father hauling their Model T out of the garage and crank-starting it with a roar; the dusty flapping wings of a Rodan-sized bird as it chased him into the smokestack at the Kitchener Ironworks; Eddie’s determined face as he strode forward toward Pennywise and triggered his inhaler in Its face with a shout of “this is battery acid, you slime!”

Bill heard coughing to one side of him, then a wheeze and a groan. “Y-y-you okay, Eh-eh-eh-eddie?” he asked and felt a hand clamp on his arm and then squeeze in response. 

“Fine,” Eddie managed to wheeze out. “But you’re paying for my next inhaler, Bill.”

Bill laughed, coughed when the laugh brought more smoke into his lungs than he was ready for, and laughed again. “I’ll buy you a canister of oxygen,” he rasped and shut his eyes. 

Bill saw: Georgie’s smiling face as he took his paper boat and yellow raincoat and went out into the October afternoon on the last day of his life; Ben’s determined face as he ran at Henry Bowers and tackled the bigger boy into the junkyard dirt; the massive underbelly of It as it scuttled overhead in Its spider form, the luminescence from Its dead-lights flaring bright as it passed over the prone forms of the Lucky Seven; Mike’s thoughtful face as he turned the pages in his chilling picture album of Derry’s hellish history; the cracked black bulb of Silver’s oogah horn bobbing up and down in his field of vision as he pedaled his laborious way toward Up Mile Hill.

The door banged and a waft of cool air came in. Bill opened his eyes and squinted through the smoke to see Greg clambering out, hacking as he went. 

“You got him?” he heard Ben call up through the smoke hole and when Richie’s voice answered in the affirmative, he shut his eyes again and tried to let his mind wander wherever it wanted to go. 

There was another series of coughs, this time from immediately next to him--Sara. His hand came out automatically and moved to her back, where his fingers collided with someone else’s—Grissom, who was on her other side. He closed his fingers over the other man’s in a brief squeeze, then said, “I-i-if you need out, S-s-sara, it’s okay. Don’t p-p-push yourself.”

“I’m okay,” she rasped, her back heaving under his palm. “I’m fine.”

More coughing and some prolonged wheezing, the kind that told him Eddie wouldn’t be in the clubhouse much longer. And sure enough the door opened, more cool air wafted in, chasing out some of the smoke, and Eddie climbed out, followed almost immediately by Brass and then again by Beverly. 

There were six left in the clubhouse then—Bill, Ben, Grissom, Sara, Mike, and Cath. 

“You guys okay?” Mike rasped. “Catherine, haven’t heard your voice. Are you conscious?”

“Just barely,” she acknowledged, coughing hard. “Gris?”

“I’m fine, Cath,” he replied, sounding more normal than any of them. “Mike, you said you had a vision last time?”

“That was me.”

“Did it include the clubhouse getting bigger?”

“As a matter of fact it did.” Mike doubled over with a coughing spell and put his head down close to the ground in the hopes that there was some good air there. “You getting that feeling?”

Grissom didn’t answer and Mike prompted, “Grissom? You okay?”

“Two circles,” Grissom responded. 

“Two circles,” Sara echoed, seconds behind him. 

“What about two circles?” Catherine asked, her voice strained. 

“Linked together,” Grissom said and again, Sara repeated him. 

“Bill?” Catherine asked, coughing harder. “Bill, what’s happening?”

“Two circles linked together,” Grissom and Sara both said and this time Bill chimed in as well. 

“Big Bill?” Mike asked, moving from his spot to get closer to his friend. “What’s going on?”

“Two circles linked together. Blood is spilled.” Grissom, Sara, Bill, and then Ben. 

“Mike,” Catherine rasped, the edge of panic in her voice. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” he said, looking at Ben and Bill’s blank faces. “It wasn’t like this before. At least I don’t think it was.”

“Two circles linked together. Blood is spilled. A sacrifice in flame.” 

Their voices were all eerily synced. Catherine shuddered and crawled behind Ben’s still seated form to reach Mike. “What do we do?”

Mike coughed harder and wiped his face. “I can’t leave them down here like this. They might not come out.” He caught her hand in his and squeezed. “You go on. I’ll stay.”

“No.” Catherine shook her head. “We all stay or we all go.”

“Two circles linked together. Blood is spilled. A sacrifice in flame.”

Then Bill’s body began to convulse. Mike leapt for his friend, then froze when he got there, not sure what to do. 

“Don’t hold him down,” Catherine instructed, coughing hard enough to gag. “Let him seize through it.” She stood and felt for the trapdoor. “We need help down here!”

The door flew open and Richie landed in the clubhouse feet first. “Help them,” Catherine rasped, pointing at Sara, Grissom, and Ben. 

“You get out first,” Richie instructed, setting his hands around her waist and lifting her up toward the reaching sets of hands at the top. 

Catherine came out of the smoke, coughing so hard she could barely get a breath. Greg grabbed her around the waist and helped her to the clearing where she collapsed onto the grass, lungs heaving. 

“Get them out,” she managed to say to Greg, who was wavering, torn between staying with her and helping the others. He nodded and pelted back toward the smoking hole in the ground that was the clubhouse. 

Mike was out now, with Sara draped over his shoulder. Nick helped them both to the grass near Catherine, then knelt and rummaged in the cooler for water for all of them. 

“C’mon, drink this now,” he coaxed, pressing the bottle to her lips. She sipped and immediately retched, thankful there wasn’t anything much in her stomach to bring up. “It’s okay, Cath, you’re all right, sip again,” Nick urged, his arm around her shoulders. “Just keep trying to drink while I get them squared away, okay? Can you do that for me?”

When she nodded woozily, he moved on. Through the smoke that was ringing the clearing, she could make out the forms of her friends. Beverly was tending to Ben and Eddie to Bill. Brass was helping Grissom sit up, plying him with a bottle of water. Richie and Greg, meanwhile, were pouring large buckets of water on the fire in the clubhouse, dousing the flames and sending more smoke pluming up. 

She lost some time then, she wasn’t sure how long—5 minutes, 10, maybe—but when she came back to herself it was to find that the situation had stabilized. Grissom, Sara, and Eddie were all leaning against a nearby log, sipping water and trying to get their breathing back to normal. Greg and Ritchie were inside the clubhouse, upper bodies the only things visible, shoveling dirt on the fire’s ashes as they talked to Beverly who sat cross-legged near the trapdoor. She looked around for Ben, Bill, and Mike and saw them sitting a short distance away, writing frantically on notepads—maybe trying to get down whatever they had seen or said. 

Nick was at her side and Brass with him, both men studying her with concerned eyes.

“You back with us?” Brass asked. He handed her a handkerchief soaked in cool water. “Here, put that on the back of your neck.” 

“And drink some more of this,” Nick instructed. He handed her a bottle of water and watched closely as she sipped. “Jesus, Cath, you scared the hell out of me! Can you please not EVER do that again?”

She nodded wanly, palming a strand of sooty hair back from her forehead. “Never again, I promise.” She sighed wearily, the full weight of a day’s worth of work and then an afternoon—or however long they’d been in the clubhouse—in a smoky room sinking down on top of her. 

“You going to be able to walk back to the car or am I going to have to carry you?” Nick asked teasingly, his arm coming around her shoulders. She settled back against him and shut her eyes. 

“I can walk,” she replied, though she honestly had no idea whether she’d be able to or not. “Just give me another few minutes to rest.”

From across the clearing—although it sounded more like “from all around the clearning” because the voice was coming from everywhere—came a chuckle, an ominous, evil laugh that made the hairs rise on the back of Catherine’s neck. 

“So,” the voice said, sounding amused. “You still think you can beat ME?”

The residual smoke in the clearing coalesced together to form the face and upper body of the clown from her dream—Pennywise, Catherine recalled from their conversation the day previous. Pennywise the Dancing Clown. It. 

She felt Nick recoil but she clutched him tighter. 

The clown’s bulbous white head peered around the clearing as if It could see them. And maybe It could … Catherine didn’t know what It was capable of. 

“W-w-we can,” Bill said, rising from his place. “Now we know how.”

“You can never beat me,” It said, sounding smug this time. “You can only lose your minds in my dead lights.” 

It laughed and Catherine shuddered. She reached for Nick and Jim’s hands and grabbed them. The others were doing the same thing, all over the clearing, and she noticed with no small amount of satisfaction that they had all instinctively grouped themselves into threes—no stragglers on their own, no pairs that could be too easily broken up, but triads, small circles of protection.

“We are not afraid of you,” she heard herself saying, and saw It’s head swivel toward her. It opened It’s mouth to reveal hideous fangs and hissed like a snake. “You aren’t real.”

“I am real,” It crooned, studying her with horrible silver eyes. “I am as real as your worst nightmares. I am eternal. I feast on your fear and suck the marrow from your tender bones. And there is no way you can stop me.”

“We got a message from the Turtle,” Ben suddenly said, rising to his feet and pulling Bill and Mike with him. “And we will use it to find you and kill you. You have no power here, not anymore, not over us.” 

He moved several steps closer to Grissom’s group and reached down for Eddie’s hand. Suddenly the circle was six and there was a hum that was almost electric starting around the clearing. 

Bill moved to the right and reached to encompass Richie’s group. The circle became nine and the hum got louder. Catherine felt herself starting to shake as a tingling began coursing through her limbs. 

When Beverly reached for her hand and Catherine took it and the circle closed to encompass all twelve of them, the hum reached a crescendo and the tingling sensation throughout her body became a full on electrical impulse. Her fingers bore down on Nick’s in her right hand, Beverly’s on her left, and she shook as wave after wave of raw, invigorating energy coursed through her. She felt her own hands being crushed, felt Nick’s body vibrating in a frenzy next to her, and heard cries from the people around the circle—not of pain, nor of pleasure either, but of knowledge, of realization, of power. 

With a hiss, the clown’s head dissipated into smoke and then into nothingness. Their hands all fell away from one another and one by one they dropped to their knees in the middle of the clearing, still in a circle, gasping. 

“Sweet baby Jesus,” Richie finally said, rubbing his eyes. “Was it good for anyone else?”

“Beep beep, Richie,” Greg said wearily. “I think I might throw up.”

“Don’t get any on you, little buddy,” Richie managed, reaching to give Greg a hand up. “And since I might be joining you here in a second, don’t get any on me.” 

The two men staggered over to the bushes where they retched as discreetly as possible. 

Bill and Mike both had nosebleeds. Grissom hands were clamped tight over his ears. Sara had her hands on his wrists and was talking distinctly enough that he could read her lips. Jim and Ben both had their heads between their legs as if they were too light-headed to stand up. Catherine looked over at Beverly and saw that they were both shaking so hard their teeth were chattering. Eddie was taking a long pull on his inhaler and Nick was gulping water, his face ashen. 

It took them all a good ten minutes to recuperate from the sudden power surge—at least that’s what Catherine was starting to think of it as—so that they could start the trek back to their cars. Rather than walk back with a ton of equipment, Richie advocated storing it in the clubhouse until they could come back the next day, a motion that the rest of the Lucky Seven seconded. Soon the equipment was stored, the door to the underground clubhouse closed and camouflaged, and the only thing left to show they’d been in the clearing was the faint smell of smoke.

“Well,” Mike said, as they all stood, peering back toward the cave that was Its lair. “I think we got our answer. We’ve still got magic on our side.”


	11. Silver Bullets

They were all completely exhausted by the time they got back to the Derry Inn. The Vegas group gave up all pretense of propriety and switched rooms—Catherine to settle in with Jim so that Grissom could move in with Sara. Greg and Nick disappeared into their room with two six packs, a bottle opener, and obviously every intention of getting well and truly shit-faced. 

Catherine was prepared to take a shower, call Lindsay, and climb into bed with her Kindle, no questions asked, but Jim persuaded her to have dinner in between calling Lindsay and climbing into bed. He ordered room service while she showered and by the time she reappeared in yoga pants and a tank top, her hair in a ponytail, platters of sandwiches and burgers had appeared on the table, along with a six-pack of Heineken. 

There was a knock on the door just as they were digging into their food. It was Eddie, looking more animated than he had in days. 

“I had a thought,” he said, then stopped when he saw that he was interrupting dinner. “I’m sorry. I can come back later.”

“No way!” Catherine waved him over and handed him a plate. “Join us.” She nodded encouragingly at Eddie’s tentative expression. “Seriously, there’s plenty.”

Brass handed over a beer with the top all ready popped off. “What’s on your mind?”

“Well …” Eddie took a quick bite of a sandwich and a nervous sip of beer. “You guys all carry guns on the job, right?” He looked at Brass. “I know you do but I don’t know about the rest of your team.”

“We’re all trained and we all carry,” Catherine answered. “Why do you ask?”

“I was thinking back over our last two confrontations with It. The silver slugs we used on It in Its clown form were powerful but they didn’t do the job. I mean, Bev’s a dead-shot but when you factor in nerves and darkness and, you know, impending death, it’s kind of hard to be exact about where and what you’re shooting, which is how It got away the first time—she only managed to get one slug into It before It escaped down the drain trap. And when she used them against It in Its spider form …” Eddie trailed off, swallowed, then continued, “I’m sure you can imagine what two silver slugs did against something that’s 20 feet tall, covered in a carapace, and has pincers, fangs, and deadlights.”

“Not a whole lot,” Brass said. 

“But the silver DOES work … there’s something about the metal that weakens It. If we could manage to get another few shots in, we might stand of chance of really killing It this time. So I was thinking that instead of silver slugs we would make …”

“Silver bullets,” Catherine finished, grinning. “Like the ones from horror movies.” 

“Yeah!” Eddie’s face lit up, happy to be understood. “I don’t know anything about making bullets, so I have no idea if it’s even possible to do this but … well, do you think we might be able to find a way to make some … enough that we can create enough ammo to load everyone on your team with them?”

“We could,” Brass said thoughtfully, “but it isn’t going to be as easy as you might think. Silver’s a tricky metal to work with when casting molds and it’s much lighter than lead or copper so it has to be used at extremely close range.”

“But it isn’t impossible?”

“Not if we have enough silver. Although if I remember my horror mythology correctly, it has to be pure silver and procuring that is probably going to be a problem.”

There was another knock on the door and Jim got up to answer it this time. Nick and Greg were on the other side, each holding half of a six pack. 

“I need to get epically drunk and I need to do it with my friends and Grissom and Sara are probably all ready humping like bunnies so I chose you,” Nick proclaimed in a long, slurred sentence. “Eddie! You getting drunk, too?”

“I hadn’t planned on it.”

“You should!” Nick raised his beer and sat down on the edge of Jim’s bed. “If you aren’t drinking, why are you here?”

“He is drinking,” Jim said, grinning, “just not as much as you, you lush.”

“Eddie has a plan,” Catherine said, taking a swallow of beer to chase the burger she’d just finished. “He was giving us the details.”

Nick flopped onto his back and sighed. “Have I mentioned lately how fucking weird this week has been? I just want to do the job and go home, not come up with plans for fighting invisible monsters!”

“Roll with the punches, Nick,” Greg said cheerfully, “or else shut up. What’s the plan, Eddie?”

Eddie explained the silver bullets plan—“More of a half plan, really,” he said modestly—and then waited to hear what the younger men thought. 

“I know where there’s silver,” Nick said after a long moment. He reached into the pocket of his jeans. “Hold on. I know I found some the other day.” He rooted in his pocket before pulling out the silver slug he’d found in the cavern. “Look at this.”

“Jesus Christ!” Eddie choked on his beer and grabbed for the slug. “Where the hell did you find this?”

“Back wall of the cave,” Nick replied. “‘S it important?”

“Yes!” Eddie practically yelped. “There were two! Did you find the other?”

“Just one.” Nick sat up, swaying a bit. “What is it?”

“It’s one of our silver slugs. We used them in our first two confrontations with It.” Eddie peered at Nick and said seriously, “Look, Nick, I know you have a hard time believing in this, no matter what you saw this afternoon. But not just anyone would have been able to find this—it wouldn’t have come to you if you weren’t a part of this.”

Nick snorted inelegantly. “I found a lump of silver …”

“… in a cavern the size of 2 football fields full of dead bodies,” Greg finished. “I’m with Eddie on this one, Nick. You’re in this now, buddy, whether you like it or not. You were in it the moment you found that slug, the minute you saw those ants.”

“But I don’t WANT to be in it!” Nick howled, slamming his fist on the bed. He looked around at his friends. “Shit, isn’t it bad enough that we spend our days tracking down people who take lives for the fun of it? Now we find out that there’s more evil in the world than what people do to each other? I can’t take knowing that!” He staggered to his feet, eyes wild. “If this kind of evil is real then there isn’t anything worth living for!” 

Eddie got to his feet, too, and caught Nick by the arms in a grip that surprised the younger man. “Yes, there is,” he said fiercely. “It’s ALL worth living for. Finding the evil and stopping it, that’s worth living for. And you know that’s true because that’s what you do, that’s who you ARE.” He gave Nick a sharp shake. “HELP US, Nick. We cannot do this without you.”

Nick stared at him, at Catherine, at Greg, at Brass then finally said, “I don’t know what to do.”

“None of us do,” Greg said matter-of-factly. “And we need you to help us figure it out.”

“I’m scared,” Nick said in a small voice, eyes on Catherine. 

“We all are,” she affirmed, rising and coming to his side. She laid a hand on his shoulder. “Nicky, I’m terrified. But I’m not going to let it keep me from doing what had to be done. We have to stop this thing.” 

“I don’t want to see the ants again,” he whispered, tears welling in his eyes. “I can’t stand it.”

“Then fight it,” Catherine replied fiercely. “It’s trying to trip us up, Nicky. It NEEDS us to be afraid because we’re weaker when we’re afraid. We have to fight back. If you see those ants again, you have to believe they aren’t real. You have to know in your heart that we aren’t going to let that happen to you again.”

“Isn’t there another way?” he asked. A tear rolled down his cheek. 

“No, honey.” Catherine touched his face, wiped the tear away. “There isn’t. You have to face it. But I’m right by your side—we all are. We’re going to beat this fucker and It’s not going to touch you.” 

Nick sank down on the end of the bed and put his face in his hands. Catherine sat next to him, laid an arm around his shoulders, and bent her head close to his, murmuring soothingly. 

Greg and Eddie moved over to the table with Brass and continued drinking, allowing Nick his privacy. 

“Silver bullets,” Greg said, as if they hadn’t paused in their conversation. “Okay. You’re going to need a lot of silver if you want to arm us all. Can we get enough?”

“That’s going to be the biggest problem,” Jim said. “That, and silver is just a really hard metal to work with—it’s so damn light the bullets aren’t going to have a lot of punch to them—not as much as copper jacketed slugs would, for example.” He turned to Eddie. “Now there’s a thought—do the bullets have to be pure silver? Can we jacket them in silver? That way it has the punch of a standard bullet but the oomph of a silver one?”

“I think,” Eddie said slowly, “that if what Ben and Mike were saying about belief is true, then it doesn’t matter what the reality is as long as we believe it will work. Maybe in all the horror stories it’s supposed to be a pure silver bullet, but if we believe a silver-jacketed bullet will work, the belief should render it effective. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah,” Greg replied. “It’s literally mind over matter. We still have the problem of where to get that much pure silver. I mean, we can melt down your slug but that isn’t going to do it. We’re going to need enough ammo for all six of us to be fully armed which means we need—help me out, Jim …”

“Our .357s hold 15 rounds of ammo per clip. That’s 90 bullets total if we assume that all six of us are judicious and use just one clip each. If we want each person to have two clips, one in the gun, the other at the ready, then double that number.”

“We have to doctor 180 bullets?” Eddie asked, face falling. “That’s a hell of a lot of bullets!”

“Still think the plan is worth it?” Greg asked. 

“Yeah, I do, I just don’t know how we’re going to do it.” Eddie fell into a brooding silence. “That’s a hell of a lot of silver.”

“Here’s the other thing I’ve been wondering,” Greg said. “That message or whatever it was that the guys got down in the smoke hole … isn’t that supposed to help us figure out how to kill the clown? Shouldn’t we be working on that?”

“Well, the first part of it is pretty simple,” Eddie said distractedly. “’Two circles joined together’ is us and you guys—we’re supposed to fight It by joining forces.”

“Yeah, but what’s the deal with the sacrifice in flame? What are we sacrificing? And let’s hope, by the way, that it is a ‘what’ that needs to be sacrificed as opposed to a ‘who.’”

“If you’re sacrificing something,” Brass mused, “whatever it is will typically have a lot of meaning. That’s why it’s a sacrifice. So … what item has a lot of meaning to you guys--” he gestured at Eddie “– that you might have to give up in order to help us take It down?”

The thoughtful look on Eddie’s face suddenly sharpened into wild, triumphant clarity. He jumped to his feet and yelled, “I got it! I know what it is!”

Catherine and Nick both whipped around from their places at the end of the bed as Eddie pumped his fist in the air and whooped. “I know what we’re sacrificing! It makes perfect sense! Jesus Christ, it’s BEAUTIFUL!”

“What?” Greg asked excitedly. “What is it?”

“It’s the perfect sacrifice AND it solves our silver bullets problem!” Eddie was so excited he was nearly trembling. “Silver. We have to sacrifice Silver.”

“What’s Silver?” Greg asked. “I don’t understand.”

But Catherine did. “Silver … your friend’s bike.”

“YES!” Eddie trumpeted. “YES! Silver was like another companion that summer … Bill took her everywhere! Hell, she even saved our lives a few times when we needed to make a quick getaway. God, Silver didn’t look like much but she could go like the wind when you needed her to! Silver was there all summer, through everything. And she’s been here through all of this, too—Mike found her in a pawn shop and bought her for Bill. He said it was just in case we needed the magic again.”

“Wait, so what are we sacrificing Silver for?” Nick asked. 

“Bullets,” Eddie said, his face feverish. “We make our silver bullets out of Silver. She’s steel and chrome … I don’t know how well those bullets will fly or even if they’ll fly at all, but I bet you anything that all we need is the belief that they will. Making bullets out of Silver will give us the one-two punch we need to KO that fucking clown to the ground.”

“Wait, wait,” Greg said, struggling to keep up. “Okay, we sacrifice Silver to make bullets. HOW?

Brass was all ready there and he, too, was grinning. “With a blow-torch. We’re going to melt down the bike to make the bullets. That’s the sacrifice in flame.” He stared at Eddie in admiration. “My god. You’re right. That is beautiful. It brings it full circle.”

Eddie started for the door. “I’m getting the others. We’ve got to start getting supplies.” 

“What can we do to help?” Catherine asked. 

“Nothing for now,” Eddie said. “I have to talk to Bill first. After all, it’s his bike.”

“He’ll do it,” Catherine said with certainty. “He’ll do it if it’ll avenge his brother.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said with conviction. “Yeah, I think he will.” He stopped at the doorway. “One of us will be in touch. Stay here at the Inn, try to get some sleep, and don’t go out alone—if you have to go anywhere, go in pairs only. It hunts at night and It will pick you off if you’re by yourself, adult or not. I don’t want anything to happen to you guys. Now that we have the circle, we can’t afford to break it.”

“What about you?” Nick asked. “At least call Ben or Mike to go with you to see Bill.”

Eddie reached into his pocket and pulled out his inhaler which, Nick noticed, he hadn’t used once since he’d entered their room. “It knows better than to mess with me,” he said with conviction. “To It, this is battery acid.” He turned the knob on the door. “Just keep watch as I head down the hall, okay?”

Nick stood at the door and watched as Eddie made his way to Bill’s room, then returned the wave as both men disappeared inside. With a sense of inevitable falling, he turned back to his friends and said, “I guess you guys better fill me in.”

***

A text from Bill appeared on all of their screens 90 minutes later. 

GOT A PLAN. MEET AT BRKFAST TO DISCUSS. LOCK DOORS. STAY TOGETHER. TRY TO REST. 

After another conversation with Lindsay, Catherine finally sank onto her bed with a sigh and shut her eyes. Jim was in the shower. Nick and Greg had gone back to their rooms. The lights were out in Gil and Sara’s room next door, though an inquiring text brought the immediate answer: “We’re okay. Sara’s finally sleeping with no nightmares. Talk in the morning. Get some rest. Gil.”

Texts to Beverly and Ben, Eddie, Richie, and Mike yielded the same results—all safe, all trying to rest—and warnings not to go out on their own. Secure in the knowledge that everyone was safely tucked away for the night, Catherine finally felt able to let her guard down to process the events of the day. 

She’d never been a religious person or a spiritual one, tending to believe only in what could be seen, measured, quantified, and catalogued. She was imminently practical—as a scientist, how couldn’t she be?—and didn’t put stock in superstition or legend—urban or otherwise. But, as Jim had pointed out, there was something so WRONG about Derry, something so inherently warped and twisted that she’d felt it from the moment she arrived in town. It was strange—she didn’t feel as though she’d had to talk herself into believing what was happening in Derry. Somehow, even though it was the strangest thing she’d ever heard of, stranger than UFO sightings or other things she normally would have considered equally as implausible, she’d had no trouble believing. She’d felt Its presence … and she’d responded viscerally to It. 

More than that, It had felt HER presence and responded. She was very much aware that she had been the first of her group to see Its manifestations and that she had been the first to instinctively invoke the power of belief against the demon. Somehow, weirdly, she had turned into the equivalent of Bill Denbrough for their group—not steady, solid, take-charge Grissom, not rough-and-ready Jim—SHE was the one who was leading the charge. And that, she felt sure, was going to cause more than a fair amount of fear-based artillery to come her way in the coming days. 

Exhausted from a day spent cataloguing bodies, searching for spiritual answers in a smoke-filled underground club house, and soothing Nick’s frazzled nerves, she sank back onto her pillows and was asleep before Jim even got out of the shower. 

***

She was in the middle of a dreamless sleep when she was awaked by the sounds of a roommate who apparently wasn’t going to be granted the same courtesy. Brass was mumbling in his sleep, words she couldn’t make out, punctuated by the occasional sharp “no” and “stop.” She thought hazily about going to him, waking him up, maybe even comforting the solid detective who had, after all, been so good to her the previous night, but she was too sleepy and her bed was too soft and the idea slipped out of her head as soon as it arrived.

Blearily, on the cusp of sleep again, she heard his pillow thud to the floor, followed soon after that by the slippery snick of the comforter joining the pillow, and she struggled with the thought of getting up to retrieve the items and tuck them back into the bed with him. Getting up out of her warm nest of blankets and pillows was completely unappealing, so much so that she couldn’t even entertain it a second time, she’d go right back to sleep where it was warm and dark and … 

It was the sound of violent movement from the next bed that really got her attention and kept her from giving in to the almost narcotic call of somnolence. It wasn’t the sound of someone tossing and turning in the midst of bad dreams—this was the sound of someone struggling, thrashing against an opponent, a sound she had been trained not to ignore. 

Catherine opened her eyes—or tried to. It felt as though she had to concentrate on forcing every muscle in her eyelids to work. Through heavy eyes she could make out that Brass wasn’t alone on the bed—a slight figure was kneeling over him, hands around the detective’s throat. 

“Jim!” She tried to roll off the bed to go for her gun … and found that she was unable to move. What the hell was holding her down? She twisted her head to one side, then the other, and saw to her horror that her wrists had been bound to the iron rails of the headboard. 

“Jim!” She yelled it, hoping Grissom or Sara would hear. “Jim, wake up!” 

The figure leaning over Brass looked her way with a leer and an awful laugh but didn’t let up the pressure on the detective’s throat. As Its false face flashed in and out of the moonlight, Catherine saw that It had taken the shape of Brass’s daughter, Ellie, and knew then why It had bound her, why It had worked some strange sleeping compulsion over her—It knew she could, and would, fight with everything in her to protect her friends. 

“You’re not real,” she hissed at It, jerking her wrists hard against the bonds that held her fast to the bed. “You’re not GODDAM real! Leave him alone! You want a fight, you bring it to me, you son of a bitch.” 

Brass was still thrashing, but more purposefully now; he was awake or at least half-way to it, and apparently aware enough of his predicament to start trying to throw off the figure straddling his torso. Catherine fought harder to free herself, twisting and jerking her wrists against the bonds until she could feel them chafing, pulling until spots danced in front of her eyes. 

“Jim!” Catherine yelled, trying to catch his eye. “It’s not real! That’s not Ellie! It’s NOT REAL!”

His eyes found hers, locked, and with a monumental effort Brass jerked out of It’s grasp, shoving It bodily off of him and onto the floor. It was still in the Ellie form, a twenty-something girl with big eyes and long hair, gapped teeth and a cynical expression. 

“Dad,” It said. “Dad, you know this is all your fault. You know you made me what I am. You know what you’ve made me do.”

Brass stood, staring at It, his eyes haunted. “Ellie … baby … I never meant …”

“Jim, that isn’t Ellie!” Catherine ground out, still fighting the bonds. “Ellie’s not here. She’s nowhere near here.” 

“C’mon, Dad,” Not-Ellie said, rising from Its place on the floor. “We all know I’d never have done any of these things if I wasn’t trying so hard to get your attention.”

Brass stared at It, uncertain, wavering, until he caught a glimpse of Catherine out of the corner of his eye, which was enough, it seemed, to break the thrall It was trying to lay upon him. 

“Cath?” He moved toward her. “Catherine, what—“

“Dad, pay attention to me.” Not-Ellie’s voice was desperate now and the feminine tones were giving way to that growl Catherine had heard under Not-Lindsay’s voice in the sewers. 

It’s losing power, she realized. It can hold a shape but not for long, not if there’s no fear to feed it.

“Jim,” she said, finding his eyes and drawing him in with her gaze, making her own voice as persuasive as she could. “Jim, help me.”

“My god, are you tied down?” His gaze sharpened, cleared, Its thrall breaking even more as he focused on Catherine. “Let me get my knife.”

“Don’t ignore me,” Not-Ellie said, in a last attempt to get Brass’s attention. It stepped in between him and Catherine, trying to block his way, and Catherine felt a surge of triumph as Brass shoved It aside and made his way to her. 

“Jim,” she warned as he reached her side, and she jerked her head toward the middle of the room where the clown now stood, the Ellie guise gone. 

“So,” It said, voice low and menacing. “Chatty Cathy and Billy-Boy will be the first to come into my deadlights.” It growled a low Doberman growl and snapped razor-sharp teeth in their direction. “I will find your worst fear, Chatty Cathy. I’ll make you stew and simmer in it. I’ll make you beg for mercy … and then I’ll eat your heart.”

In between the space of heartbeats, It was gone, vanished to whatever dimension It traveled in, back into the sewers beneath Derry.

“Jesus Christ.” Brass blew out a long breath and steadied himself on the edge of the bed. “I feel like I just woke up. What the hell happened?”

“Pennywise was trying to ascertain if you’re the weakest link.” Catherine twisted and groaned as her wrists sang with pain. Now that the adrenaline rush of the attack was over, she was starting to feel panicked and frightened. “Get these off me, okay? I can’t stand being tied down.” 

“My god, I didn’t—did I do that to you?” He was starting to sound a little panicked, too, and threw himself wholeheartedly into cutting through her bonds. 

“No, I—I think It bound me up somehow. It must have done it while I was asleep.”

“Goddammit, what IS this stuff?” Brass was sawing through it with his knife but wasn’t having much luck. “It looks like the webbing from the cavern. My knife isn’t doing anything.” 

Catherine felt sick at the idea of having that foul material touching her skin. “Wake up Gil. He’ll have shears in his kit.”

Within moments both Grissom and Sara were in the room with them, singularly horrified at the news of Pennywise’s attack. 

“These should do it,” Grissom said, holding up a pair of pruning shears. “We’ve been using them to cut down the bodies in the cavern. Jim, help me out.”

“Just don’t take her hand off along with the webbing,” Sara joked mordantly. She sat down next to her friend as Grissom worked to free her wrists. “Are you okay?” she asked softly.

“I don’t know yet,” Catherine admitted. “The dreams were one thing … and the thing in the clearing today, well, we were all able to stand against that … but this … God, Sara, it’s strong. I mean, you can feel how malevolent It is when you’re one on one with It. Either It has gotten stronger over the years, or the Lucky Seven were one damn tough group of kids with a lot of magic on their side. I don’t know how anyone can face that thing and not give in to It.”

Sara looked worried. “Can we stand up to It?”

“If it’s all of us together, I’m positive we can. But individually … let’s hope there’s not another attack on any of the others.”

“Should we check in with them?” 

“I don’t think so. I think It expended all of Its energy trying to take out Jim and me. But I wouldn’t be surprised if It comes after you and Gil or Greg and Nick next. It knows the Lucky Seven, their strengths and weaknesses. It’s not as sure of us yet. It’s trying to figure out who the weakest link is so It can pick them off first.”

“Can Nick handle it?” If Sara felt at all ashamed at so boldly naming Nick as the weakest of the group, she didn’t show it and Catherine was glad—it was time they all started accepting some hard truths and that was one of them.

Catherine shook her head. “No. He can’t. Not tonight anyway. Maybe sober. Maybe after spending a little more time with Richie and the others. But if Pennywise had gone for him tonight—It would have broken the circle. We need to keep Nick close.” She sighed with relief as her right wrist came free of the sticky webbing. Grissom moved around to cut her left loose. “What time is it?”

“3am,” Sara replied. 

“Only a few more hours till sunrise,” Catherine murmured. “Eddie said It hunts at night. Let’s get to sunrise and we’ll be okay.” She leaned her head back against the headboard and sighed wearily. “Be on your guard.” Her other wrist came loose and she winced as she registered how much it hurt. 

Sara raised an eyebrow. “You must have been really pulling, Cath; that wrist is sprained. I think I’ve got a splint in my luggage … I have to use it when the barometric pressure starts falling.” She was back in a moment with the promised splint, which she helped Catherine secure around her left wrist. 

After reassurances from Catherine that they were both fine, Grissom and Sara returned to their room, leaving her alone with a very quiet Brass. 

“You okay?” she asked, retrieving 2 bottles of water from the mini-fridge and passing him one. 

“A little shell shocked,” he replied. “I feel like that should have been a nightmare and not reality but I’m also just as sure that it wasn’t.” He bent to pick up the comforter and pillow from the floor and began to neatly remake the bed. “Are YOU okay?” He eyed the brace on her wrist. “My god, Cath, you were fighting like a tiger to get free.”

“I don’t know what would have happened if I had,” she admitted. “It might be better that I didn’t. It probably would have killed me.”

Brass shook his head. “See, I’m not sure that It would have. I think … and I don’t know where this is coming from, it’s just a feeling … I think It likes toying with us, the same way a cat likes to play with a mouse or a bird that it’s caught. When It attacks us like this, it’s to send a message—‘look what I can do.’” 

Catherine frowned. “It looked like it was trying pretty hard to subdue you, Jim.”

“Yeah, while I was half-asleep, unaware of what was going on, unable to fight back. Where’s the fun in that? I know that It doesn’t fit the profile of a human serial killer, but that’s essentially what It is. And like all the sick twisted bastards we hunt, It likes to play games with Its prey.” 

He caught Catherine’s skeptical look and hastily added, “Don’t get me wrong, It DOES want to kill us. It never had a worthy opponent until the Lucky Seven came along and now that we’re working with them, It’s going to play the game until It’s damn good and ready to execute the coup de grace. I think It wants a grand spectacle … a gory finish like the ones Mike was telling us about … a massacre. It’s saving us for a grand finale.”

Catherine shuddered. “My god, what a thought. And there will be no more sleep tonight. Thanks.”

Brass cast a rueful smile in her direction. “I’m sorry. I just want you to know what I think we’re up against.” He came to sit next to her on the bed and laid a hand on her arm. “You’re strong, Cath … so damn strong and unafraid. Of all of us, you’re the one It can’t bend or break. You ground us, you keep us together, and because of that, you’re a threat. You heard It … you and Bill are in Its crosshairs. It is going to try Its hardest to break you before this is over and I don’t want to see that happen.” He laid a hand against the side of her face, traced his thumb across the arch of her cheekbone. “I want you with me on that plane back to Vegas. Don’t you do anything that’s going to jeopardize that, okay?”

Catherine relaxed into his touch, her hand rising to cover his. “I won’t … or at least I’ll try not to.” She opened her eyes and gave him a mischievous smile. “You know I have a knack for finding trouble.” 

“That’s why I worry,” he said, stroking her hair away from her face. “That talent you have for getting into scrapes and situations is why most of the hair I have left is grey.” 

He urged her closer with a hint of pressure on the back of her head and when she came willingly he slid his mouth over hers, slow, gentle, and sweet. “Stay with me,” he whispered as their lips parted. 

“I’m not going anywhere.” She straightened and looked him in the eye. “But I AM going to see It dead before we leave here.”

Brass nodded. “I know. And I am, too. But if it’s going to get ugly … and I think it will … I want you to keep those three words in mind. Let them ground you.”

“Not necessarily the three little words every woman wants to hear but they’re still pretty good,” Catherine joked, trying to lighten what was turning into a very intense moment.

Brass chuckled. “Sara and Grissom can keep their monopoly on ‘I love you.’ All I want is for you to …”

“ …stay with me.” She whispered it on the same breath he did. “I will.” 

After a long moment he asked, “Think you can sleep again?”

“May as well try. I’m not sleeping alone though.”

“Oh, hell, neither am I,” Brass replied emphatically. “I’m sleeping right here next to the red-headed tigress.”

“Who’s protecting who here?” Catherine asked, amused. She shifted pillows and sheets, careful to do as little as possible with her splinted left wrist, and patted the mattress next to her. 

“Let’s call it having each other’s backs.” Brass settled down beside her and clicked the lamp off, pleased when she spooned up against him just as she had the previous night, her back to his chest. “Try to get some rest.”

“I’ll rest when we’ve pumped that fucker full of silver bullets,” Catherine muttered. 

“Tigress,” Brass murmured back, pressing a kiss to her temple. “Sleep well.”

For the rest of the night, it was a dreamless sleep for both of them.


	12. A Sacrifice in Flame

Bill woke that morning confident that they were finally well on their way to destroying It once and for all. Eddie’s plan was beautifully circular, encompassing all of the strengths of the Vegas Six with those of the Lucky Seven and adding magical belief to modern-day fire power. It was the plan they could never have enacted when they were kids… but might have if they’d known anything at all about the speed and firepower of an automatic rifle and a clip filled with silver bullets.

He would never have thought of sacrificing Silver for the plan. If someone had suggested back then that he would have to give up his bike to avenge Georgie, he would have had to think long and hard about his answer. Even now he felt a deep sadness and regret at the idea of giving up the bike. Silver had been his friend that summer, his escape, his secret weapon. Just as the equine Silver had been a boon companion to the Lone Ranger, so the vehicular Silver had been to 12-year-old Bill Denbrough who had pedaled it all over Derry to escape the demons of his too quiet, grief-stricken house, to keep on the move from Henry Bowers and his gang, to do something that did not require him to use his broken stutter. Even more than the members of the Lucky Seven, Silver was his best friend. 

But a sacrifice was required—the Turtle had said so down in the smoke hole—and so he would give Silver up to the flames. He and 

Ben, up before the others, went out early to the hardware store and picked up everything they’d need—acetylene blow torches, bullet molds, funnels, chisels, work gloves, safety goggles. They bought multiples of everything because, as Eddie had pointed out the night before, it was a LOT of “silver” bullets to make and everyone would have to play a part if they wanted to finish. The inexorable feeling of heading toward an end-game, of a final reckoning between them and It, was building in his chest. It would come to a close soon and they had to be ready—they only had one more shot at bringing it to a satisfactory end. 

Everyone would have to be schooled in the art of bullet making. Ben could do that easily enough. It would still take them awhile to get the bullets done because they’d only have their Vegas teammates with them for the evening. Best to keep up appearances for Rademacher and anyone else under It’s thrall … they’d need to go back into the cave and continue identifying and tagging the bodies. Meanwhile the Lucky Seven could work in Mike’s garage. 

With the supplies stored at Mike’s house, Ben, Bill, and Mike headed to the Derry Inn for breakfast with the others. 

The two groups were gathered in the dining room with coffee and breakfast. They were all listening so avidly to Catherine and Jim that it didn’t take long for Bill to realize there had been an incident during the night. Catherine was wearing a splint on her left wrist—Eddie had worn a cast on his left arm for the last month and a half of that summer—and was explaining how she’d injured herself. 

“It bound you to the headboard?” Beverly shuddered in horror. “My god! It’s never done anything that …” she had to consider the word … “premeditated before. Usually It blitz attacks when It feels threatened. Taking the time to tie you down …” She shuddered again and Richie laid an arm across her shoulder and squeezed. 

“The sleeping compulsion is new, too,” Eddie said. “Jim’s right, Catherine, it really does see you as a major threat.”

“It said Bill and I would be the first to go,” Catherine stated matter-of-factly. She moved to rub at her wrist but then drew her hand back. “It’s getting desperate.”

“Which is why we need to get going on the bullets,” Ben said. He poured a cup of coffee from the carafe on the sideboard and sat down next to Nick. “We’ve got all the supplies. Did Eddie explain the plan?”

“He did,” Sara replied. “It seems …” She searched for a word then finally settled on, “ … harmonious. I don’t know if that makes sense but everything just fits together the right way … layers upon layers of complementary meaning.”

Bill grinned at her. “I-I was just thinking the s-s-same th-th-thing.” He met Catherine’s eyes. “Wuh-we’re going to need all the help we c-c-can get with the b-b-bullets. Do yuh-you think you c-c-can still wuh-work with your wrist like th-th-that?”

She nodded, eyes snapping with fire. “You’re damn right I can.”

Ben looked satisfied with her answer. “Excellent. We’re going to start with 90 bullets … the way Jim explained it that should be enough for everyone who carries to have one clip of 15 bullets. Cath, can you still shoot?”

“I’m right hand dominant. I can manage.”

Ben turned to Grissom. “I know you all have to be down in the cave with the bodies … but is there any plausible explanation you can give Rademacher for why, say, two of you guys aren’t there today? We need as many people as we can on this bullet project.”

Grissom considered. “I can say I sent two of them to the crime lab in Bangor with a batch of physical evidence. That’s an all day trip.”

“Good. Can you spare Nick and Jim? I want Jim’s bullet-making expertise and Nick’s steady hands.”

“I can get by without them.” He met both men’s eyes. “You two okay with that?”

“If I get to work with blowtorches, bullet molds, and liquid metal, that’s a damn good day in my book,” Nick replied cheerfully. “Jim, you game?”

“I’m all for it,” the detective replied. “Everyone leave your duty pieces with me. I’ll get them loaded as we get the bullets made.”

“Bill.” Beverly turned luminous eyes on their de facto leader. “Are you sure you want to give up Silver?”

“Y-yes,” he replied firmly. “I-i-it’s the only wuh-wuh-way to make this wuh-wuh-work.”

“All right,” Ben said, clapping his hands together. “Everyone in bullet manufacturing, meet at Mike’s in an hour.” He addressed Catherine, Greg, Grissom, and Sara. “When you guys finish up for the day, meet us there and we’ll reassess how far along we are. And be careful … It made a run at Catherine and Jim because It’s getting out of control. Don’t give It another chance.” 

***

Catherine was on guard all day, waiting for It to make a next move … a move which never came. Maybe It had depleted Its energy with the attack the previous night. Maybe It simply wanted them to be on edge and nervous. Whatever the reasoning, the expected attack didn’t happen … not to her, nor Grissom, nor Sara, nor Greg. By the time they had finished in the cavern for the day and headed to Mike Hanlon’s place to help with the bullets, Catherine was both exhausted and on edge. 

The Lucky Seven were hard at work and had integrated Jim and Nick seamlessly. There were two assembly lines going at once—Nick and Richie worked blow torches over the pieces of Bill’s disassembled bike and poured the resulting liquid metal into crucibles; Beverly and Jim, clad in work gloves, poured the liquid metal into the bullet molds held by Mike and Eddie; Bill and Ben cracked the molds once they had hardened and piled the shining new bullets into two spare hubcaps. 

Despite the exacting nature of the job, the intense heat from the blow torches (mitigated only a little by furiously blowing box fans), and the cramp inducing positions necessitated by such close work, everyone was getting along famously. Laughter rang out from the garage at regular intervals, most of it in response to Richie Tozier and his “thousand voices.” It seemed to Catherine that, on the whole, Nick and Jim had gotten the better of the two jobs. 

“I think it’s break time!” Nick said, as he spied his colleagues coming up the driveway.

“Boy, I say boy, there ain’t no breaks for slave labor,” Richie trumpeted in his best Buford Kissdrivel voice. “Bend yuh, I say bend yuh back over that blowtorch afore I beat yuh head in with this here shovel.” Returning to his regular voice before anyone could “beep beep” him, he called, “Mikey! Break time on the assembly line!”

Mike clamped the mold he was holding into the vise grip and secured it and then gestured for Eddie to do the same. The rest came to various stopping places and lowered their gear, taking a moment to stretch or wipe their foreheads. 

“Hey,” Nick said, coming up to his friends. “You guys okay?”

“Nothing wrong with us that a really cold beer couldn’t fix,” Sara replied, stretching the kinks out of her back. “Looks like our bullets are coming along really well.”

“We’ve finished 75 of them,” Nick said. “We’re going to do another 25, just to make sure we have enough for full clips for everyone and a few extra.”

“I think it’s about time for a dinner break,” Mike suggested. “Why don’t I call out for pizza? We’ll let the latest round of bullets harden and talk strategy.”

“I second that!” Beverly pulled off her work gloves and dusted her hands on her jeans. “Let’s get you all that beer,” she said to the rest of the Vegas team. 

Once everyone was washed up, they settled around the picnic table in Mike’s back yard with bottles of beer and bowls of nuts and pretzels. Bill sat down across from Catherine and said, “Y-y-you’ve got a good f-f-friend in Jim Buh-Buh-Brass, you know? He-he thinks the wuh-wuh-world of you.”

Catherine smiled. “The feeling is mutual.”

“H-h-he’s worried about wh-wh-what might happen in the s-s-sewers. That you might g-g-get hurt.”

“He said as much last night. We’re all running a risk of getting hurt. I’m not going to let that keep me from doing what’s right.”

“I-I-I agree. But I also think h-h-he’s right. You and I are the wuh-wuh-ones in Its c-c-crosshairs. I juh-juh-just want you to know that you’ll have to b-b-be on your guard the c-c-closer we get to facing It d-d-d-own for the final time. Wh-wh-when we faced It as kids, I-I-It didn’t hesitate to t-t-try to kill uh-uh-us. I don’t wuh-wuh-want your daughter to be uh-uh-alone because we guh-guh-got careless with you.” He glanced over at the detective who was laughing uproariously at something Ben had just told him. “A-a-and   
I don’t think J-J-Jim would forgive me e-e-either if you g-g-got hurt or k-k-killed.”

Catherine laid a hand on Bill’s arm. “You are a very sweet man.” She laughed a little and said, “Everyone … especially Grissom … will argue with me when I say this but I don’t exactly TRY to do things that are outright dangerous. Sometimes I end up in situations where a bit of foolhardiness is necessary to get the job done, but I’m not after getting myself killed. I’m going to go down there with you all and I’m going to kill It because It needs to die. But I’m not planning on getting myself killed either. I want to go home to my daughter.” She cast a quick look at Brass and said, softly, “And, yeah, I want him beside me on the plane home. I’m not going to do anything to jeopardize that.”

Bill nodded firmly. “G-g-good.” He gave her a grin. “I th-th-think we should finish making the b-b-bullets and then get uh-uh-apocalyptically dr-drunk. Wh-wh-what do you think?” 

Catherine laughed hysterically. “Yeah, I think I’d be good with that.”

And so they did. After the pizza had been eaten and the remaining 25 bullets made, the members of the Vegas Six and the Lucky Seven sat around Mike Hanlon’s picnic table and got drunk. 

It wasn’t, as Bill had suggested, an apocalyptical night of drunkenness—they were all old enough to recognize that getting THAT drunk would only lead to extreme hangovers and headaches the next morning. The drinking didn’t reach the level of a bacchanal or even that of a really good frat party. But it was enough to allow the 12 of them to set aside their fears and uncertainties about the day and the events to come and to enjoy each other’s company. 

They traded stories—not about Derry or It or anything even remotely related but stories from Vegas, and England, and L.A, all the places they had lived and worked. Grissom and Bill swapped urban legends, tall tales, and mythology from the northeast, the southwest, and England, trading stories as easily as they would have traded cards in a round of poker. Sara and Catherine listened to Beverly as she shared stories of the fashion world, of shows and expos, and lamented the current penchant for neon colors and 80s revival. Richie, Nick, and Greg discussed concerts and bands and great moments in radio history, a conversation that involved a lot of air-guitaring and loud exclamations of “I have that song on my iPhone!” Jim, Mike, Eddie, and Ben simply drank beer, played cards and horseshoes, and shot the shit, easy and companionable as you please. 

By the time midnight rolled around, they were all feeling relaxed, warm, and buzzed … until Jim Brass’s phone rang.

“Brass … Andrew, what can I do for you …Really? … Well, give me the location …Look, have your guys secure the scene and we’ll go over it in the morning. There isn’t much we can do right now.” 

Brass put his hand over the phone and mouthed “new scene” to the others. 

“Andrew, I’m telling you that securing a crime scene in the dark is only going to end in questionable evidence that you’ll have to answer to in court …no, that isn’t what-- … okay, look, we can come down and help your guys but there’s not a lot beyond that … fine, give me the address …okay, we’ll be on our way in about half an hour …”

Brass hung up and rolled his eyes. “Not the most cooperative guy. He doesn’t want to wait till tomorrow on this scene.” He shook his head to clear it. “Mike, you may need to brew some coffee, my friend.”

“What’s the address?” Mike asked ominously, ignoring the small joke. 

“It’s …” Brass looked down at the notepad he’d jotted the address on. “29 Neibolt Street.”

The air suddenly crackled with energy as all the members of the Lucky Seven came to immediate and tense attention. 

“Fuck,” Bill swore. “I-i-it’s the end game. All ready. W-w-we finished juh-juh-just in the nick of time.”

“What’s going on?” Sara asked. “What’s at Neibolt Street?”

“One of It’s lairs,” Beverly said grimly. “Bill and Richie fought it there early in the summer just when things were starting. Then we all came together in August and fought It there again. It wants to complete the circle that it started with us.”

“What do you want to bet that wasn’t Andrew Rademacher on the other end of the phone,” Eddie said with a raised eyebrow. He started toward the garage. “Let’s get ready. Pennywise decided to play tag … and we’ve just been declared ‘it.’”

Richie gleefully rubbed his hands together and said with relish, “I have ALWAYS wanted to say this … let’s LOCK AND LOAD, people!”

***

Within half an hour, they were ready. Each member of the Vegas Six had their own duty piece loaded with a clip of “silver” bullets. Though they knew It was not likely to use bullets against them, they had all still worn their Kevlar vests. Nick expressed serious doubts as to the efficacy of Kevlar against It, especially if It turned up in spider form, but his objection was noted and dismissed and the Kevlar donned. They all had switchblades in the inside pockets of their vests, ready to be grabbed at a moment’s notice. 

“Damn,” Richie said, surveying them as they finished suiting up. “Wish we’d had all of this back then!”

Grissom looked grim. “For all we know Nick’s right and this isn’t going to do any good. But better to be safe than sorry.”

“Don’t think like that,” Mike warned. “You have to believe it will work. ALL of you have to believe it. This is your own circle you’re forming. It has to have its own power. Believe.” He looked hard at Nick. “You must believe or we’ll never come out of this alive.” 

After their failed confrontation with It, the Lucky Seven had loaded themselves for bear for this final showdown. Each of them had silver slugs in their pockets, remainders of Silver that hadn’t been needed for the bullets, ready to be turned over to Beverly if needed. They all had slingshots, though everyone knew that it was Beverly whose aim would be truest. Beverly had the Bullseye in her back pocket and a small modified game bag full of silver slugs strapped securely across her body. After Eddie’s rib-crushing introduction to It’s spider form, the Lucky Seven had taken the precaution of investing in suitable protective gear and now wore strata-foam chest protecting shirts similar to those worn by BMX bikers. 

Finally the twelve of them stood outside of Mike’s garage, ready to go. 

“Is anyone else scared as hell right now?” Richie asked, as conversationally as one would ask about the day’s weather report. “Because I really think I might soil myself before all of this is over.”

Eddie clapped his hand on Richie’s shoulder and squeezed hard. “You’re not alone. But it’s high time we finished this fucker, don’t you think?”

Richie grinned and said, as Toodles the English Butler, “Such lahn-guage, mah-ster Edward, such a show of Anglo-Saxon vuhl-garity. The colonies have ruined you, sir, ruined you utterly, wot-wot.”

The others all laughed nervously. Richie dropped the voice and said, “Eddie Spaghetti is right, friends and neighbors. It’s not going to feed on this town one more day.”

Mike extended his hand palm down in the middle of the circle they all made. One by one the others placed their hands on top of Mike’s. The crackle of energy they had all felt in the clearing at the Barrens began to hum. 

“Believe,” Mike said firmly, looking around at all of them. “Believe we can do this.”

“Wuh-wuh-we can,” Bill said. “I know we can.” His eyes were hard as flint. “At least I-I-I know I c-c-can. For Juh-Juh-Georgie.”

Beverly tossed her head, her eyes flashing fire. “For everyone It ever killed. Let’s finish It.”

As one, the twelve members of the Vegas Six and the Lucky Seven clicked on their flashlights, checked their weapons, and stepped out into the cruel darkness of Derry’s night.   
 


	13. Finish the Job

Neibolt Street was as decayed and crumbling as it had been the day Eddie Kaspbrak had seen a leper crawl out from under the porch, as dank and dark as it had been the day Bill Denbrough and Richie Tozier climbed in the basement window to find where It was hiding, as warped and foul as it had been the day a fully intact Lucky Seven went in to find and kill It. The house pulsed with an unnatural power and emanated a feeling of evil so strongly that it made everyone break out in goose bumps in spite of the hot night. 

“Oh my god,” Sara murmured, stepping back involuntarily. “Jesus Christ, this place feels …”

“As if every evil thing in the world has taken up residence,” Mike finished. “Welcome to 29 Neibolt Street.”

Sara’s face was grey in the glow of the flashlights. “I can’t go in there. No way.”

“Sara?” Beverly asked, walking up to the younger woman’s side. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t go in there,” Sara repeated. “She’ll be in there for sure.”

“Who?” Ben asked. “Who’s going to be in there?”

“Natalie,” Sara said, very voice audible shaking. “She’ll be there waiting. She’ll try to take me again.” She turned on her heel, about to bolt. Ben stopped her with a firm clasp on her shoulder. 

“No, she won’t,” Ben said soothingly. “Sara, remember…whatever you see in there isn’t real.”

“Natalie is locked up for the rest of her life,” Nick said, adding his voice. “There is no way she can get at you again. I promise you that.”

Sara mechanically shook her head, looking ill. “I can’t go in there. I can’t do it.”

“Yes, you can,” Grissom insisted, sliding his hand in to hers. “I know you can, sweetheart. We need you in there. We need your strength.”

“Don’t make me,” she begged, her eyes shining with tears. “Gil, please don’t make me.”

He leaned in close and whispered something in her ear, something that made her face harden with resolve. She nodded once and took in a hitching, gasping breath as she squared her shoulders. 

“All right,” she said, biting bloodless lips. “Gil’s right. I can do it. I’m okay.”

“Yeah, you are,” Richie said, clasping her around the shoulders and giving her a fierce half-hug before proclaiming in his Pancho Vanilla voice, “Joo steek with us, keed, and joo will be de greatest monster-honter dere ever wuz in Meh-zi-co. Batches! We don’ need no steenkin batches! We gots guns, keed, guns and slugs. Who needs batches?”

Sara laughed, a little hysterically. “Good, because I don’t have mine on me. Let’s go before I lose my nerve.”

They all moved forward in a clump toward the house. Bill had taken the lead, the mantle of leadership clearly on his shoulders now, and led them toward the front door which was, predictably, standing open. On the door, written in blood, were the words COME FLOAT. Under the letters was pinned a picture of Georgie Denbrough and a water-logged paper boat. 

“Mother-fucker,” Bill hissed. “You w-w-want a fight, you bastard, yu-yuh-you’ve got one.” He ripped the picture off the door as he passed. 

The house still projected the same feeling of wrongness that the Lucky Seven remembered so well … the warped and twisted feeling of a place so entirely perverse that all of the angles and dimensions had shifted unalterably. There was more than one hoarse, strangled breath taken in as they stepped inside the house and, of course, the wheeze of Eddie using his inhaler. 

“A-a-all right,” Bill said. “A-a-as much as I w-w-want to say w-w-weapons at the ready, I d-d-don’t want us wasting a-a-ammo on s-s-something It’s using to s-s-scare us. So w-w-wait for w-w-weapons on my say so. A-a-anything you s-s-see, try to fight i-i-it off w-w-with each other’s h-h-help.”

They started down the hallway in an alternating pattern of Vegas Six and Lucky Seven. Bill led the group, Ben was the rear guard, and Nick was ensconced in the middle where, hopefully, he wouldn’t be seen as easy pickings.

It turned out they didn’t need to worry about Nick because It started by attacking Sara before they were even twenty feet down the hallway. As the first of them to have vocalized her fears outside the house, It had apparently decided that she, rather than Nicky, was the weakest link. Her flashlight fell with a clatter out of her suddenly nerveless and bloodless hand, causing all of them to whip around with alarm. 

“My arm!” Sara screamed, staring at it in abject horror. “Jesus Christ, my arm!”

It was a testament to how powerful It was on its own home turf that they were all able to clearly see the illusion that had Sara screaming—her right arm was horribly mangled, the muscles in her forearm mashed out of shape as if they had been crushed under a heavy object. The skin was heavily bruised and covered in insect bites, gashes, and the deep red of a third-degree sunburn. All of the fingers on her hand were broken and swollen to three times their normal size, the skin puffed, cracked, and gangrenous. 

Mike, who was standing next to her, immediately began to talk her down. “Fight it off, Sara. Don’t give in to Its cheap tricks. That’s what It wants. You know it’s not real.”

Beverly chimed in with the same, as did Eddie, but it wasn’t until Grissom pushed his way up to Sara that the words broke through. 

“It’s not real, baby. IT’S NOT REAL. It’s an illusion, it’s a trick. Your arm is fine. I sat with you while they took the cast off, remember? We did PT on it together every day. You know your arm works. You know it’s whole.” 

He seized her limp right hand, grabbed hold of Nick, who was beside him, and gestured for the younger man to take Sara’s left hand. The small circle closed as they joined hands and the illusion dropped away, leaving Sara panting and wild-eyed. 

“It’s okay,” Grissom murmured, holding her tightly. “You’re all right.” He looked over at Bill, who was profoundly pale in the half light of the flashlights. “Was it this strong before?”

“Y-y-yes,” Bill replied grimly. “I-i-it’s coming at us with buh-buh-both barrels b-b-because w-w-we’re on It’s tuh-tuh-turf. W-w-we need to move f-f-fast.”

They shuffled the order a bit so that Grissom could remain next to Sara. They still kept Nick at the center of the group and Ben continued to bring up the rear, though Greg dropped back to keep him company. 

Though it had been nearly 30 years since anyone in the Lucky Seven had ventured into the house, it looked frighteningly similar to the way it had on the hot August day they had entered it to fight It to what they thought had been a standstill. The same moldy carpet covered the floor, the same ghastly wallpaper of frolicking elves was peeling in strips from the walls; there was even the same bloated and decayed “girlie book” in the corner of the living room. 

“This feels like the scariest freakin’ funhouse in the world,” Richie said grimly, pushing aside a strip of wallpaper that was brushing against his shoulder. It didn’t surprise him overly much when the wallpaper began to uncurl in long runners and grasp for his shoulders and arms, so he simply snapped, “Try harder next time, you fucking Ronald McDonald wannabe … I’m not buying it” and the paper sprang back to normal. 

“Nice one, Richie,” Ben said in appreciation. 

They crept forward. Catherine kept her hand on her gun, darting her eyes from side to side to check for threats. Brass was next to her on the left and she was immensely glad of his presence. 

A heavy breeze filled with the musty scent of an old attic washed over them. The window next to Mike exploded inward and the giant probing beak of a bird the size of Rodan burst through the window with a vicious clack. 

Brass didn’t waste any time. He stepped forward, past Catherine, aimed his .357 and shot at the bird. 

The bullet caught the bird between the eyes. It squalled and reared its head forward, beak clacking, unable to decide whether to go for Mike, its intended target, or Brass, the one who had the audacity to wound it. 

It hesitated too long. Greg’s gun was out, too, and with another bang, the bird’s eye exploded in its socket. But that wasn’t enough to stop it and the bird thrust its head forward again for another attack. 

Mike was ready for it. Using the slingshot with which he was, at best, only a passable shot, he let fly one of the slugs and caught the bird in its other eye. Blinded, the bird gave one last squawk of pain and, without warning, vanished with a pop of displaced air. 

“H-h-holy shit,” Bill whispered into the silence that followed. “T-t-that was increh-eh-eh-eh--” 

“Incredible,” finished Richie limply. 

“Well, now we know the bullets work,” Beverly said in an awed voice, watching the guys holster their guns. She grinned at Mike, who was looking a little ashen. “Nice shot, Mikey.”

“Yeah, it was,” Eddie said, slinging an arm around Mike’s shoulder. “Not bad for a guy who hasn’t used a slingshot since he was a kid.” 

Ben was looking nervous. “It’s really going all out, guys. We need to finish this before anything else happens.”

Beverly shook her head. “I don’t think It’s done with us yet, not by a long shot.”

No one objected to her statement, mainly because they all knew, deep down, that she was right. Beverly shuddered at the thought of what was ahead and knew instinctively that the worst of the tests would lie at the end—for Bill and for Catherine.

The staircase to the upper story of the house loomed in front of them. They took it single file, trying to keep a watch on the rear-most members of the group. 

“Isn’t this the room that was trying to separate us?” Ben asked in a low voice as they stopped in the doorway of the next room. “It warped its dimensions to make us lose each other.” 

“D-d-dummy up everyone,” Bill said. “Hold h-h-hands and don’t let go for any r-r-reason. Ben’s right—It’s going to try to s-s-separate us.” Making sure he had a firm grip on Catherine’s hand, who in turn kept a tight hold on Jim, Bill led them into the room step by step, gingerly treading across the rotten boards. 

Richie and Beverly had just stepped into the room to follow when an ominous creaking rent the air. With a thunderous crack, the floor dropped out from beneath Beverly’s feet, wrenching her hand out of Nick’s, who was just behind her, and very nearly pulling Richie, who was just ahead of her, into the darkness along with her. 

Richie had lightning reflexes and they were the only things that saved Bev from a gruesome fall into the dark pit below. His hand clamped down on hers as soon as her fingers started to slip out of his grasp and he held on hard, even when the weight of her body toppled him to the floor precariously close to the edge. 

“Bev!” The cry came from both sides of the hole where she swung precariously, held up by Richie’s strong grip on one side … and absolutely nothing on the other. She saw Ben push his way forward, his hand outstretched, Orpheus reaching for Persephone before she could be sucked back into the underworld. The others seized him by the back of the belt to anchor him as he reached far out over the hole to try to grab her free hand. 

On the other side was Richie, his face strained but determined as he tried to gain the leverage he needed to pull her back up. Jim and Catherine both maintained a solid grip on Richie to keep him from going down into the pit. Bill inched out along the lip of the hole and noticed that Nick and Grissom were doing the same from their side until the three of them had formed a half circle around the hole. 

It took a concerted effort by Jim, Catherine, and Richie, but they managed to haul Beverly out of the hole, which disappeared as quickly as it had opened up with that same familiar pop of displaced air that they were learning was common to It’s illusions. Ben bolted across the space to Beverly, who was holding her shoulder, her face white. 

“I think it’s dislocated,” she said through bloodless lips. She leaned back against Ben, looking shocky and pale. “Christ, that’s my shooting arm.”

“Which is exactly what It wanted,” Eddie said grimly. He looked around the group. “Anyone have EMT training?”

“I do,” Greg said, stepping forward. He looked at the rest of the Vegas group’s shocked faces. “What? I can’t branch out?” He very gently felt Beverly’s shoulder and nodded. “Yeah, it’s dislocated all right. I can put it back in place but it needs a sling to hold it there. Anyone have a shirt they can give up?”

“Here, use this,” Nick said, pulling off his black button-down, leaving himself in jeans and a white undershirt. “Whatever you’re going to do, Greggo, do it quick. There’s some weird energy building in here.” 

Greg nodded. “I know, I can feel it.” He looked at Ben and instructed, “Brace her left shoulder,” then turned his attention to Beverly. “It’s going to hurt but only for a minute, okay?” In the quick movement that was kindest, he held her right arm out in front of her, placed the heel of one hand on top of her shoulder, the other on the front of it, and pushed, snapping the joint back into place with a sound that had them all wincing. Beverly cried out in pain but quickly clamped down on it, breathing hard until she got herself under control. Ben squeezed her good shoulder and murmured something comforting in her ear. 

“You did great,” Greg praised, quickly forming Nick’s shirt into a make-shift sling that he tied around her shoulder. “Try not to move it too much.” He took a deep breath and looked at the others. “Our best shooter’s out of the running. Who gets the slingshot?”

“Bill,” the Lucky Seven all answered. 

“N-n-no,” Bill replied immediately. “I c-c-can’t shoot like B-B-Bev.”

“You’re going to have to,” Eddie insisted. “There’s no way she can shoot with that shoulder.”

“It needs to be R-R-Richie,” Bill said. “H-h-he’s the only other one of us who h-h-hurt it. R-r-remember, Richie? With the sn-sn-sneezing powder? A-a-and your Voices. And Ch-ch-chud. It knows you can d-d-damage it. T-t-take it.”

“Bill, you’re the one It’s afraid of,” Richie retorted, his voice a little panicky. “It has to be you.”

“I h-h-have to do the Ritual again,” Bill replied. “M-m-me and C-C-Catherine, I think.”

“Bill’s right,” Beverly said, reaching into her pocket with her good hand and passing the slingshot to Richie. She pulled her ammo bag from over her head and handed it to him as well. “Richie, you know you can do it.”

“Fuck,” Richie swore, but he took the slingshot and the bag all the same. “If we all die, it’s gonna be because you guys insisted.” He held the slingshot at the ready, one of the silver slugs cradled in the cup which was, in turn, tucked into his palm. “Let’s get the hell on with it.”

They continued across the room without incident, though they all began to feel what Nick had described earlier—a weirdish energy that built up the further they walked, the sense of terror swirling in the air, almost thick enough to push through. It manifested differently for all of them; for Nick it was ants running up and down his spine; for Sara it was her bad arm going numb; for Grissom it was his hearing fading to nothingness. Jim felt the visceral tension that came before a suspect either gave up their gun or fired it, while Catherine found herself swept up in the panicky surge of adrenaline that she remembered from being attacked by a suspect at a crime scene. Greg was caught in the moment seven years prior when the DNA lab had exploded, sending him crashing through the glass wall of the lab and into the hallway with 3rd degree burns on half of his back and neck. 

“Jesus,” Nick breathed, swiping at his arms and hands to escape the feeling of phantom ants. “This thing means business.”

“I-I-It’s scared of us,” Bill replied. “M-m-more than ever.” 

They had reached the end of the hall and arrived at the bathroom where the Lucky Seven had first encountered It as a group. It was exactly the same, right down to the exploded toilet. Even the rusty spill of old blood—Ben’s blood—in the bathtub from the werewolf slice across his gut was still there, though it should have long since degraded.

The only difference from that day nearly three decades before was that the drainpipe stood open, widened enough now to fit an adult. A litter of orange pompoms was drifted around it. The message was clear—you’re coming down here with me.   
Mike shone his flashlight down the drainpipe. 

“There’s a ladder,” he said bemusedly. “It goes down into the pipes that connect to the main line.”

“Let’s do this,” Jim said grimly. “I’ll go down first.”

One after another they climbed down into the darkness. Jim’s flashlight illuminated the inside of the disused pipes. 

“It’s the old sewer system,” Eddie said matter-of-factly. “It looks like it hasn’t been used since we were kids. It used these old tunnels like a subway system. We chased It down here after the battle at Neibolt Street. That’s why It wants to finish this here.” He looked around, orienting himself, and took a pull on his inhaler. “The cave is that way.”

“It won’t be in the cave,” Grissom said abruptly. “We’ve been in the cave. We violated It’s sanctuary. It will want a final stand somewhere we haven’t been. Which places are left?”

“The pipe junction,” Mike said. “The one where we faced Pennywise in clown form. That’s where It attacked Stan.”

“That’s where we’re headed then,” Eddie said. He turned and peered at each of the tunnels. “That way,” he said, pointing. 

They walked in pairs now. Nothing popped up or jumped out to scare them. Perhaps Pennywise sensed the time for that was past. Now that they were coming, now that they couldn’t be stopped, It was saving It’s energy for what lay ahead. 

“What’s this Ritual you mentioned?” Catherine asked Bill. “What am I supposed to do?”

“I-i-it’s kind of m-m-metaphysical,” Bill said. “I-i-it’s w-w-when you b-b-b …” He had to stop because his stutter had grown too bad. Ben took over the explanation. 

“Bill’s right. It is metaphysical and it takes a strong will to do it … which we know you have in spades. It’s called the Ritual of Chud. During the Ritual, you face the demon and you metaphorically bite into each other’s tongues. Then you tell it jokes until it laughs. The first one to laugh loses.”

Catherine stared at him blankly. “It’s a joke telling contest? Sorry, guys, but you’re going to lose. I don’t know enough jokes to win any kind of contest.”

“They aren’t r-r-real j-j-jokes,” Bill said. “I-i-it’s a c-c-contest of wills. Y-y-you have to show it you a-a-aren’t afraid of it. The b-b-biting into each o-o-other’s tongues is l-l-like being in each other’s b-b-brains. It knows your t-t-thoughts and you know Its. T-t-there needs to b-b-be two p-p-people for the R-R-Ritual. It was R-R-Richie and me last t-t-time. I think it will be y-y-you and me this time.”

“Why?” Catherine asked the question that had been plaguing her. “Why is it going to be me? I’m nothing special.”

“You’re our protector,” Grissom said from behind her, where he was walking with his hand firmly in Sara’s. “Actually, more than our protector … you’re our warrior. You’ve fought to find out what’s killing these kids from the beginning and when we did find out you were determined to kill It. Like Bill, you’ve tasked yourself with protecting us, and the rest of Derry, from It.”

“But Gil, you’re our leader. You’re in charge of the team. Why didn’t It pick you?”

“Because you’re the only one of us who’s a mother,” Grissom replied, stopping her dead in her tracks. “Mother figures are inherently protective. It’s instinct.”

Mike chimed in, “Gil’s right. You’re the power that we didn’t have last time. None of us--” he gestured at the Lucky Seven, “--are parents. None of us would fight or die to protect a child. But you would and It senses that. It saw you as a challenge from the moment you went into that sewer pipe to rescue the child you thought was drowning. It tested you by showing your daughter’s face. When you didn’t show fear, It saw you as a threat.” Mike laid a hand on her shoulder. “You want power beyond those silver bullets, Cath? You’ve got one.”

Catherine drew in a shaking breath. “What am I supposed to do? How do I do this ritual?”

“Y-y-you’ll know,” Bill said reassuringly. “When the time c-c-comes, you’ll know. A-a-and I’ll b-b-be there, t-t-too.”

“You’d better be,” Catherine replied. “I can’t do this alone.” 

Brass, who had been walking quietly beside her, took her hand and whispered, for her ears only, “You’re not alone.”


	14. End Game

The tunnel widened out into a juncture where six different pipes would have emptied, had there been any water or waste left to flow in them. The vaulted ceiling was festooned with hanging roots, all growing down toward the floor. The members of the Lucky Seven, now on high alert, peered around. 

“We’re here,” Eddie announced unnecessarily. 

“Yeah, we are,” Richie said, drawing the slingshot. “This is looking a little too familiar for my taste.” 

“I think it’s going to be here any minute,” Greg said. “I don’t know how I know, but I do. It’s coming.”

“Richie, Bill, Catherine, get in the middle. The rest of you, circle up around them. Get your weapons ready,” Mike said urgently. “Whatever it throws at you, DON’T BREAK THE CIRCLE.” He looked at Richie who was holding the Bullseye slingshot in a death grip. “Richie, you have to protect the two of them.” He gestured at Bill and Catherine. “Whatever you have to do, whatever you need us to do, tell us and we’ll do it. You have to protect them so they can do the Ritual.”

Richie nodded wordlessly. 

There was a rumbling in the tunnels in front of them, a sound like a subway train careening through, out of control. A sick whitish glow came crashing through the tunnels. It bathed the members of the Vegas Six and the Lucky Seven in an unnatural light and in that moment they all knew a wash of fear so strong it threatened to shatter their minds. But a look around the circle at each other assured them all and they tightened their grips on their weapons. As It in its twenty-foot spider form came creeping out of the tunnel, they all knew with certainty that whatever happened in the next moments would re-define the meaning of fear for the rest of their lives. 

“W-w-wait to shoot until you s-s-see the deadlights,” Bill yelled. “But don’t l-l-look directly into them!”

The spider reared, exposing Its underbelly and Its most horrific weapon—the deadlights. When it did, the sound of five Berettas expelling round after round of silver bullets roared through the tunnel. It screamed in unexpected pain, an angry sound that threatened to shatter their eardrums, and shuddered. 

“Another round!” Brass yelled. “Aim dead center! Go!”

Another explosive pop of bullets rang out and then the snick of the guns being cocked and readied for another round. The four members of the Lucky Seven who could shoot (minus Richie) took aim with their Bullseyes and let fly a round of silver slugs. 

With the displaced pop of air, the spider disappeared and a clown with a Doberman’s snarling head appeared outside the circle and rushed at Brass. He side-stepped, went to shoot, but couldn’t move fast enough. The Dober-clown was on him, human knees to his chest, pinning him, the snarling canine jaws inches from his face. 

“Jim!” Nick yelled, starting to move out of place. Mike yelled, “Don’t break it, Nick! Keep the circle intact! We have to protect Bill and Catherine.” 

Nick wasn’t going to let the homicide captain go down without a fight. Drawing air into his lungs, he roared, “JIM! IT’S NOT REAL!” The others joined him, a chorus of “fight it!” and “it’s not real” rebounding off the tunnel walls. 

It was Catherine, heedless to Mike’s instruction, who ultimately broke the circle by rushing forward and jumping onto the creature’s back. She grabbed the ruff of Its hideous jumpsuit and jerked hard, twisting the material around the thing’s neck until It choked. The body bucked, trying to throw her, but she held on tenaciously, strangling the horrible thing with all the strength she could muster. It got the upper hand, however, and threw her like she weighed no more than a sack of laundry. She landed hard, skidded into Gil, who grabbed her by the upper arms and pulled her to standing. 

“Get your gun out,” he urged her. “Shoot it, Cath, kill it!”

She grabbed her weapon, ignoring her shaking hands, and charged the thing again, trying to get a shot that wouldn’t hit Brass. He had both arms up, was pushing back against the thing’s chest with all his might, but inch by inch was losing ground. 

“Jim, stay with me!” she yelled. Thankfully, he heard and her words gave him the burst of strength he needed to throw the Dober-clown off. 

Catherine, Nick, and Greg all had a bead on it as soon as it landed and three silver bullets caused the thing’s head to explode in a shower of blood and brains. There was the pop of displaced air and they were left in silence. 

“Was that it?” Nick asked shakily, brushing bits of brain off of his shirt. “Did we do it?”

“No, It’s just getting warmed up,” Ben said. “Everybody reload now. It’ll be back in a minute.”

Catherine was at Brass’s side, helping him to his feet. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he said shakily, looking around for his gun. “That’s two I owe you, huh?” 

He got an arm around her waist and pulled her tightly to him. He leaned in to kiss her temple and murmured, “That’s my tigress. Thanks for staying with me.”

She willed back the tears that were forming. “Watch my back, okay?” She gave him a hard squeeze and looked back at the center of the circle. “Bill, how do we start this Ritual?”

“Wh-wh-when it comes back, look into I-I-It’s deadlights.” He extended his hand. “I think we n-n-need to h-h-hold on to keep from losing each o-o-other.”

Catherine nodded and grasped his hand. It was hot in hers but his grip was firm.

“D-d-don’t let go,” he said. 

“I won’t,” she replied. 

The rushing sound was back, from another tunnel this time. 

“Here it comes again!” Greg yelled. “Everybody get ready.”

It came back as a cobra this time, a form the Lucky Seven hadn’t seen. There was another hail of bullets as the snake reared back, exposing Its underbelly and Its horrible, gleaming deadlights. Catherine locked eyes with Bill, nodded, and stared into the white light that blazed brighter than the Vegas sun. 

And then she was gone; not physically gone, just mentally and spiritually out to lunch, whizzing through a nighttime sky of stars and spinning planets. Bill was there; she felt his mental hand in her mental hand and knew their physical hands were still linked back in the tunnels, surrounded by their protective circle and the slingshot-wielding Richie Tozier. 

There were two hot lights blazing ahead of them, one a soothing yellow, like the pulse of the afternoon sun that warmed your skin on a perfect spring day. The other was a blast of sickly white, too hot, too bright, a flare of cancer-causing UV rays that blinded and blistered. 

They passed the yellow and as they passed Catherine could barely make out the form of an enormous Turtle, its voice mellow and soothing in her skull: 

“It thought I was dead, but I’m not; I came back for one last bit of advice, boys and girls, and you took it, you did it, you heard me and listened and now the rest is up to you. Billy Denbrough, you must thrust your fists against the posts and still insist you see the ghosts. You, young lady, you beautiful girl, you exquisite creature, you are the one they’re all counting on, the warrior goddess, the protector mother. You must be a tigress, you must stand up and tell It ‘enough all ready, go to your room, you’ve been a very bad boy, a very cheeky monkey, a very naughty demon indeed,’ and you two must banish it from your world; destroy it, and keep it from feeding forever. This you must do; I can tell you no more.”

And the voice of the Turtle trailed off into silence. They swung past it and toward the blazing white light. The voice from the white light was as insane and angry as the Turtle’s was soothing and it gibbered and howled until Catherine wanted to clamp her hands over her ears. 

“Kill you all, kill you all! You have interrupted my feeding, you have interrupted my nap, you have made me so angry that even roasting your bones and eating your hearts would be too good for you. You will pay, yes, pay! Your child will DIE, Chatty Cathy, and your friends will DIE, Bill Denbrough, and you’ll watch them all scream out in agony when I kill you all, kill you all, for desecrating my lair, for injuring me, for angering me, you will pay for all you have done and the trouble you’ve caused. Kill you all, kill you ALL!”

It was into that blistering hot light that they had to go to complete the Ritual of Chud. Catherine understood that and Bill understood that and though neither of them wanted to go they had no choice because it was, ultimately, the only way to defeat the demon that was preying on Derry. 

Catherine took a deep breath, though her mental lungs didn’t register it, and Bill took a deep breath, though HIS mental lungs didn’t register it, and they turned to each other and said, mind to mind: 

“We have to.” 

“I know.” 

“We’re going in and we might not come out.” 

“We will. I promise we will.” 

And then they plunged into the sickly blaze of Its deadlights and when the demon stuck out Its mental tongue, both Catherine and Bill squeezed each other’s hands and simultaneously bit. 

***

Brass saw Catherine shudder and her hand tighten on Bill’s. The shudder ran through the writer and his hand clamped down on Catherine’s until their fingers were knotted together and squeezing until they were pale and nearly bloodless. Catherine shuddered again, harder, and her body jerked as if she were in the midst of a nightmare—and for all he knew, she was. It took every bit of self-control he had not to break the circle and go to her.

He tore his gaze away and kept firing steadily at the cobra, which was standing still now, undulating in place, Its hooded silver eyes locked on Bill and Catherine. 

“It’s got them!” Nick yelled frantically. “Jesus Christ, somebody do something.”

“No,” Beverly said, her voice firm. “It’s the Ritual. Don’t do anything but hold the circle.”

They all stood, weapons at the ready, adrenaline humming, watching as the deadlights began to thin into a cord of white light that touched both Catherine and Bill. 

“What’s that light?” Sara asked, shifting her weight, tensed and ready to fire as soon as the cobra moved. 

“Deadlights,” Ben replied. “It did that before … with Richie and Bill. They’re in there.”

“How do we know if they’re okay?” Grissom asked. 

“We don’t,” Mike said. “But we have to believe that they are.”

*** 

Chatty Cathy, Chatty Cathy, how do you like my deadlights? The voice hissed and banged inside her brain, clattering like a pinball. 

Her body felt as if it was being squeezed from all sides, as if she were caught in a vise grip with very little room to maneuver. She wondered what was holding her and the idea that It really did have her in It’s tongue was too disgusting and horrible to contemplate. 

“I’m not impressed,” Catherine thought at it, injecting a note of scorn into her mental voice. 

You should be. You should be very impressed. I have a most impressive mind, a most impressive memory, and, best of all, a most impressive appetite. 

“You’re a monster. You’re worse than any psychopath. You deserve to die.”

I am eternal. I cannot die. The brats have tried. They cannot kill me. There is nothing you can do that will even come close to destroying me. 

“We almost did,” came Bill’s non-stuttering mental voice. “We nearly got you, you fucker, nearly had your guts for garters. We hurt you so bad you had to go away for nearly 30 years. I think we can kill you this time around.”

You’re old, little brat, old in your paltry human years, old and weak. And the Turtle, the fool, thinks he helped you but he did not. He could not. He is senile. For want of fresh meat such as I enjoy he has grown tottery and weak-kneed. You have nothing to harm me with.

“Silver bullets,” Catherine said, wishing she didn’t feel as if she were so constricted, frustration and pain making her voice pure acid. “Those will put a nice dent in you, for sure. And we’ll see how well you do when we pull your still beating heart out of your disgusting body.”

Do you think that body is the only one I inhabit? I AM fear, child, I am what wakes you in the night, sweating and screaming. I am the shiver down your spine and the racing of your heart. I make your legs go jelly-like and turn your hair white from shock. I am everything you are afraid of, everything you want to hide from.

It squeezed—and what the hell was it squeezing them with? The idea of being held in It’s disgusting tongue resurfaced again and made her want to gag. Catherine groaned then cursed herself for showing even that much weakness.

“I am not afraid,” she spat at it. “Not of you.”

You ARE afraid. Of losing your friends. Your lover. Your daughter.

“It will happen eventually. It will happen to all of us. I don’t fear death.”

Then I will kill your lover. I’ll pierce his heart and suck him dry. I’ll kill him and watch you lose your mind.

She wanted to lash out at it, wanted to hurt It, but she held onto her calm and said, “Jim would die to protect me, just as I would die to protect my daughter.”

“We would all die,” said Bill, “to keep you from feeding on any more children.”

So be it, then, said It and it reached out with Its mind, reached toward the humming voices that Catherine could only vaguely make out as those of her friends, reached with the whipcord of It’s deadlights and seized. 

*** 

The beam of white light that had engulfed Bill and Catherine widened suddenly to include Richie. Instead of rendering him immobile as it had them, it filled his eyes with a blank silver light and sent him lunging forward before any of the others could react.  
Then his hands were around Eddie’s throat, pinching off his airway, the deadlights that possessed him lending him supernatural strength. Eddie grabbed for Richie’s hands, tried to pry them off his throat, kicking at Richie’s knees, his face going an alarming shade of red, then purple. 

The circle all ready broken, the others swarmed the grappling pair. Acting calmly and quickly, Beverly dragged Sara, Mike, and Jim toward Bill and Catherine to form a smaller circle of protection, wincing when Jim took possession of the hand attached to her injured arm but holding the handclasp firmly. 

“Kill you all, kill you all!” Richie was hissing, the words issuing from the throat of the Man with a Thousand Voices from a voice not of his own creation. It was the sibilant hiss of Its vocal cords that came from Richie’s mouth in gibbering streams. “Gonna get you, Eddie Spaghetti, gonna get you, you asthmatic little shit, squeeze your throat until you really can’t breathe, squeeze until you’re dead.”

Eddie was still kicking and twisting in Richie’s grip and the others—Grissom, Ben, Greg, and Nick—were struggling mightily to pull those impossibly strong hands away. But even the four of them couldn’t alleviate the supernatural death grip and Eddie’s struggles were growing weaker. 

Bill suddenly bellowed “NO!” and, raising his hands, gave a mighty shove at the air. Richie’s body jerked, as if Bill’s pantomime had physically slammed into him, and he toppled to the ground, his head smacking against the tunnel floor. Eddie, suddenly free of Richie’s iron grip, slumped against Ben, heaving in huge lungfuls of air, scrabbling in his pocket for his inhaler. 

“Jesus Christ,” Mike breathed. Without breaking the circle, he called over his shoulder, “One of you guys check on Richie.”

Nick bent over the unconscious DJ, warily keeping out of arm’s reach in case Richie woke again and decided he needed another target. But he didn’t move and Nick reached to feel his pulse. 

“He’s got a pulse, he’s just out cold.” He called over his shoulder, “How’s Eddie?”

“Fine,” came a thin and scratchy voice in response. “I’m okay.”

“Let’s kill this damn thing,” Greg said, staring up at the undulating cobra. “It’s a sitting duck.”

“Not while Catherine and Bill are still in there with It,” Beverly replied firmly. “Bill’s got some control over it, he must or he wouldn’t have been able to push Richie away from Eddie.” She looked at the others. “Come rejoin the circle. Form up around Richie, too. He needs our protection.” 

One by one they rejoined hands, each feeling the spark of power that came from having them all in the same circle. But it was weaker now because Richie wasn’t in it and because Catherine and Bill were off in the deadlights, making Beverly wonder if they’d be able to beat it this time if their power was slackening.

***

Impressive, Billy Boy, but a little too slow. Now the Tozier brat is down for the count and they’re weakening out there, just as you’re weakening in here. 

The pressure around their bodies intensified. Catherine had no idea how Bill had managed to get his arms free—or had he? Was it a mental shove he’d given Richie and not a physical one?—but hers were caught fast by her sides. She felt as if her ribs would break, which was an odd feeling for an experience that was supposed to be purely metaphysical. 

“You’ll never have them,” Bill said firmly. “They won’t let you in again.”

You’re an arrogant boy. Always have been. You don’t see the weaknesses in little tiny fleshbags like yourself. They will let me in with no resistance. They will let me in if I knock and say ‘pretty please.’ Let me see who else I can grab in my deadlights.  
It narrowed Its focus, crafted a beam of whip-like deadlights, aimed for Sara and …

“NO!” The word rolled out of Catherine with raw and elemental power. She drew herself up as tall as she could and felt as if she were suddenly towering and terrible. “You won’t harm them again.”

How are you going to stop me, little girl? The voice was definitely amused. 

“I forbid it.”

You forbid it, human child? More amusement. You can forbid me nothing. You are small and weak. There is nothing you can do to stop me. 

It reached out again with Its deadlights and grabbed for Sara, seized her and shook her like a doll. Catherine saw Gil grab for her as she fell to the ground, shaking as violently as she would if she were in the midst of a grand mal seizure. 

“Stop it!” Catherine screamed. “STOP HURTING HER!”

Give me your word you will leave me in peace to feed, human child, and I will. 

“Not ever,” Bill said firmly. “You’ll die for what you’ve done.”

Then she dies first. The deadlight cord whipsawed Sara back and forth on the tunnel floor, shaking her so hard that Catherine feared her neck would snap. Sara was screaming in terror and agony, a sound that tore through Catherine like a scalpel into flesh. 

“NO!” It was Bill who broke this time, Bill who screamed. “She doesn’t deserve that. Stop it.”

Leave me and I will. Sara’s shaking slowed but didn’t stop. 

“Bill,” Catherine said, a plan half-forming. She wouldn’t think it through, couldn’t think it through because thinking it would mean It could sense it, so she simply plunged in and hoped—prayed—that Bill would catch on. “Bill, we have to stop this. It isn’t working.”

“Catherine—“

“You have to see reason, Bill. It’s too strong. If we keep on, It’ll kill them all.”

The chuckle in It’s voice was infuriating. 

She sees reason. She knows when to live to fight another day. Listen to her, Billy Boy. Chatty Cathy finally has a point worth making. 

It stopped toying with Sara and released her from the deadlight cord, leaving her limp and unconscious on the tunnel floor. Gil leaned over her, his face white. 

“We have to leave, Bill,” Catherine said, making her voice pleading, hoping Bill would pick up on what she was attempting. “We have to go back.”

“We only have this one more chance, Catherine!” Bill’s voice was raw with emotion. “We have to finish the Ritual.”

She could feel It relaxing Its grip on them, Its certainty that they were leaving defeated and weakened making It sloppy and overconfident. She twisted her body, flexed her fingers, feeling for the switchblade that was in the pocket of her pants. She had no idea whether a physical knife would hurt It in whatever dimension they were currently in, but she was willing to give it a shot. 

“It’s too strong,” she said, injecting a note of sorrow and defeat in her voice. “Let’s go.”

Its laugh was low and infuriating. 

Chatty Cathy knows that if I wanted to, I could eat her heart right now, could snap her neck and leave her limp and lifeless. She knows that there is no way she can win. She knows it better than you do. Go, Billy Boy, go with her now and know that you have failed twice to avenge your brother, that Georgie lies six-feet under with only one arm, and I still roam… and play … and feed. 

“I’m not giving up,” Bill said. “Catherine can leave but I’m staying. I won’t let go.”

Dammit, she thought. Bill, give it up. It needs to drop Its guard. 

But then It did what she had seen so many suspects do throughout her years at CSI … It got overconfident. It relaxed Its grip on her almost entirely to concentrate on Bill. 

Then you will stay here in my deadlights until you lose your mind. Your little friend can go …she cannot keep you safe. 

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Catherine reached inside herself, drew on the raw anger and hatred she felt for this killer of children, this eater of flesh, and sharpened that rage to a knife point. “I’ve got your filthy tongue, asshole. All I have to do is cut it out.” 

With a primal scream, she focused the razor sharp rage in her mind on the point of the switchblade in her hand and drove both as hard as she could into It’s tongue. It let out a horrible scream and dropped her and Bill entirely. She stabbed down again and both heard and felt the demon shriek in agony. 

“What did you do?” she heard Bill yell in her ear. 

“STAB IT!” she screamed. “Focus your anger and stab it!” She raised her arm for another strike, thinking of Lindsay, thinking of Jim, thinking of the cavern of murdered and half-eaten children, and drove the blade downward again, eliciting another shriek from the creature. 

Bill, invigorated, had his own switchblade out too and as he prepared to stab down into It’s tongue, he bellowed, “HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS!” 

He slammed the knife home and the last of the pressure around their bodies dropped as the tongue severed and the demon writhed in agony. 

“We can finish it off in the tunnel!” Bill yelled, seizing her hand. “Let’s go!”

And then they were whizzing through the stars again, away from the dying white light, past the pulsing yellow from which they seemed to hear a chuckle of merriment, and back down into the tunnels below Derry. 

***

Catherine’s eyes flew open and she yelled, “Shoot it! Shoot it now!” to the shocked circle of people around her. 

Bill came back to himself a moment after her, echoing the same thing, but it was Brass’s “Vegas Six, let’s go!” that prompted them to raise their guns. Even Sara, who was battered and bruised from being so brutally shaken, got to her knees, drew her gun, took aim at the cobra, and began blasting away at it. 

Shots rang through the tunnel until Catherine was convinced they’d all go deaf. She kept shooting, though, shot until she ran out of ammo, shot until the cobra, the sickish white light from its underbelly all ready fading, fell to the floor with a crash that shook the tunnels. 

Then all was silence. 

“I think we did it,” Ben said quietly. Then, more loudly, “Holy crow, I think we did it.”

Mike was staring at the body of the cobra, which was withering, shrinking down before their eyes. “We did.” His eyes went to Catherine and Bill. “You did. What the hell did you guys do?”

Catherine started to take a step toward Mike and rapidly realized her legs weren’t going to hold. She lowered herself to the tunnel floor instead and, just for good measure, bent her head forward to counter the rapidly rising dizziness. “We stabbed Its tongue.” 

Saying it made her gorge rise and she turned her head away so she could retch in relative privacy. She felt hands on her shoulders—Jim’s –and she leaned against him gratefully.

“You stabbed Its tongue?” Beverly asked, sounding slightly ill. “I thought that was just a metaphor.” 

“It was,” Bill replied from his place on the tunnel floor beside Richie, who had yet to regain consciousness. “But then … I think we made it real. I can’t explain it. But Catherine did it.”

“No, I--”

“You did,” he insisted. “I couldn’t have done that without you. You were a warrior goddess, Catherine, just like the Turtle said.”

“You saw the Turtle?” Eddie rasped. “What did it look like?”

Catherine and Bill turned to exchange looks and finally they both said, as one, “Like a turtle.”

Then Catherine noticed what none of the others had yet and said, quietly, “You lost your stutter.” 

Bill’s hand rose to his mouth as he ran back over the last three sentences he’d said then, with a grin, said, stutter-free, “I guess I did.”

Catherine turned her attention to Sara, who was propped shakily against Grissom’s shoulder. “I saw what It did to you. Are you okay?”

Sara considered and finally said, “I don’t think I’ll be having nightmares about Natalie anymore.” She met Catherine’s eyes and both women knew that they’d have a lot to talk about.

They wordlessly picked up the shell casings from their hail of silver bullets, storing them in their vest pockets, although they knew the chances were miniscule that anyone from Derry Public Works would ever venture into the old tunnels to see or question the existence of so many shell casings. 

Mike kicked the withered husk of the cobra, the remains of It, the finish to a grueling 30 year relay race. Turning to Bill, he said, “You want to stomp it into oblivion? For Georgie?” 

When Bill’s feet landed on it and pulverized it to dust, the smile on his face was more genuine than anyone, including the members of the Lucky Seven, had ever seen. 

***

They climbed back out of the sewer at 29 Neibolt Street … or, rather, the remains of 29 Neibolt Street. Sometime during their battle (or perhaps, Mike later reflected, AFTER their battle) under the streets of Derry, the decrepit old house had caved in on itself, leaving a blackened pile of debris. 

It was a sorry-looking group who made their slow and painful way back to the Inn. Catherine leaned heavily against Brass, who kept a supporting arm around her waist. Ben lugged a still unconscious Richie, while Greg kept a close eye on a pale, pinched-face Beverly who was cradling her shoulder as if she was in terrible pain. Mike and Nick flanked Bill, who was looking more than a little shell-shocked now that his jubilation at killing It had worn off. Grissom had an arm around Sara’s shoulders and she, in turn, had slung a protective arm around Eddie, whose neck was starting to bruise and swell.

At the driveway of the Inn, Ben and Beverly peeled off from the rest; Ben was taking her to the hospital to have her shoulder set. Greg, Nick, and Mike got Richie, who had just started to come to consciousness, into the elevator and up to his room on the third floor, Eddie and Bill trailing in their wake. Sara and Grissom, Catherine and Brass all made their slow and tired way up to their adjacent rooms on the second floor. 

“You guys going to be okay?” Grissom asked, pausing outside the door. 

“Yeah, we’ll be fine,” Catherine assured him, trying hard to smile. She wasn’t entirely sure how successful she was. “Can’t keep me down for long.”

Grissom shook his head admiringly. “Don’t I know it?” He stepped forward and quickly swept Catherine into an embrace. “I’m proud of you,” he whispered in her ear. “Don’t forget it.” He stepped back, slid an arm around Sara’s shoulders, kissed her temple, and said, “See you in the morning. Late morning.”

“You got that right,” Brass agreed and carefully shut and locked the door. “Don’t think we’ll be seeing anything that goes bump in the night tonight, thanks to Catherine, Warrior Princess.”

“Stop it,” she said, embarrassed. “It wasn’t all me.”

“No, it wasn’t,” he agreed. “But I agree with Bill … he couldn’t have done it if you hadn’t been there.”

“You know,” she said with a yawn, pulling off her clothing and dropping it into a pile, certain she never wanted to see it again, “this WAS a team effort, so you deserve just as much credit as I do. We all had to be there to make it happen. I mean, you heard Mike … the circles would never have worked if we didn’t all fit together somehow.” 

“Yeah, but I didn’t save you from a clown Doberman hybrid. And I didn’t stab the—Never mind,” he hastily amended, seeing the faintly nauseated look on her face. “All I’m saying is while, yes, we all put in the work, you’re the one who really pulled it all together.”

“Well, we can debate about that until the moon turns blue, but I’m still saying it was a team effort and we should all be proud of ourselves.” She thought for a moment and then laughed. “This was either the best team bonding experience ever … or the worst.”

Brass began pulling off his clothing, too, which reeked of gunpowder. Shell casings fell like rain from his vest. “I’m voting for best, since it got me a feisty redhead in my bed.” He crossed to her, clad only in his jeans now, and pulled her up against his chest before kissing her ferociously. “I don’t claim to know what happened wherever you and Bill went. I can’t even imagine what you had to do to get us all out of there alive. But you were amazing, Cath. And I am absolutely in awe of you.”

She slid her arms around his neck, rose to her tiptoes, and kissed him sweetly. “Don’t be in awe of me. I’d hate that. Just love me for me.” She froze when she realized that she’d let the “L” word slip. 

Brass wasn’t the sort of man to make a big deal of it, fortunately. He simply shrugged and said, “I all ready do.” He cupped her cheek. “Let’s get a shower and get to bed.”

“Oh, so we’re sharing the shower?” Catherine asked, arching an eyebrow. 

“Absolutely. Water conservation.”

She laughed aloud and wrapped her arms around him. “That’s a pretty flimsy excuse, Captain Brass.”

“CSI Willows, I’ve got plenty that are flimsier than that.” He scooped her up in arms and kissed her again. “C’mon, Warrior Princess. Let your devoted soldier worship you as you deserve.” 

The bathroom door closed on their laughter. 

***

Two days later, the members of the Vegas Six and the Lucky Seven sat on the porch of the Derry Inn, saying their goodbyes. It wasn’t just the Vegas Six who were wrapping up to go back home … the remainder of the Lucky Seven were finally returning to their own homes and their old lives as well.

Bill had received word the morning after their battle in the sewers that his wife, Audra, had mercifully regained full consciousness. Bill credited that miracle to finally defeating It. He spent the bulk of the following 48 hours on the phone with Audra and was, he assured them, more than ready to get back to England to be with her. He extended an open invitation to come visit to all of them and Grissom, who had been thinking about doing an entomology seminar for Scotland Yard, promised to take him up on it. 

Richie was headed back to L.A; he was, in fact, hopping the same flight as the Vegas Six. He, Greg, and Nick were all leaning against the porch railing, chatting a mile a minute, making plans for upcoming concerts both in Vegas and in L.A. Much to Greg and Nick’s delirious delight, he promised them backstage passes and VIP treatment. 

Ben and Bev, predictably, decided to leave Derry together, opting to rent a car and take a long, slow cross-country road trip. They promised to call when they arrived in Las Vegas and Catherine suspected that by the time they got there, all the members of the Vegas Six would be invited to a wedding in one of the chapels on the Strip. 

Eddie was also renting a car and decided to take his time driving back to New York. Mike, having taken two weeks of vacation from the library, decided to come along for the ride, citing that it was high time he see some of the world outside of Derry. As the others talked and laughed, the two of them poured over a guidebook, enthusiastically planning sight-seeing stops.

And for the Vegas Six, it was time to go back to Las Vegas. Their work had been cut short when, like the house on Neibolt Street, the tunnel in the Barrens collapsed, burying the remainder of It’s victims in one mass grave. Their work had not been in vain—the Bangor lab had been able to identify 142 victims using mitochondrial DNA analysis, which meant a few more families were able to rest easier about the fate of their loved ones. Mike promised to place a marker with the names of all the victims at the mouth of the cave, even if he had to pay for it with his own meager salary. The others all objected to allowing Mike to shoulder the cost alone, so their last task as the Lucky Seven was to pick out and pay for an obsidian stone engraved with the names of It’s many casualties. 

The Explorers were gassed up and waiting, their equipment and luggage stored and ready to go. Phone numbers and email addresses had been exchanged and plans for the West Coasters to see one another soon were made. But none of them were quite ready to leave the porch, where the spark of energy that bound them all together was lingering, though they all sensed it was ready to break. 

“You know, I really can’t thank you enough,” Beverly said, sidling up to Catherine. She wore a sling to keep from moving her sore arm, but even with one arm incapacitated she moved with a grace that conveyed a sense of lightness of spirit. An obvious weight had been lifted from Beverly … and from the others as well. 

“I told you, it wasn’t just me,” Catherine replied, blushing. “We all …”

“No, no, not that,” Beverly corrected. “I have to thank you for something that must have been much harder to do.”

“What’s that?” Catherine asked, perplexed. 

“Believing,” Beverly responded simply. “You listened to what anyone else would have dismissed as gibberish and you didn’t wave it aside … you took a leap of faith. And now a whole town is safer because of you.” She cast her eyes to one side to look at Bill Denbrough. “Bill is still sane because of you. If you all hadn’t come along when you did I have no doubt we would have sent him back to England in a strait-jacket.”

Catherine shrugged off the thanks. “I like my job because I get to solve puzzles. I get to be logical and empirical and find the key that solves the crime. I like things that I can quantify and understand.” She pushed her sunglasses up on her head. “But there are some things you just can’t explain. You have some experiences you can’t quantify. And this was one of them. Sometimes you meet people you connect with on a deep, almost magical level. And after you make silver bullets and chase down demons that live in the sewers and you come out of it relatively unscathed and mostly sane, well …it convinces you that sometimes you just … have to believe.” 

She looked around the porch at the twelve people who had, somehow, made indelible marks on her heart and felt a wave of good feeling wash over her. She grinned at Beverly and said, “Sometimes believing is all you can do.”

END.


End file.
